


Don't Ask

by pebbles1971



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Autistic Character, Biphobia, Cluelessness but eventual acceptance of the whole LGBT+ rainbow, DADT, Gay Character, Grief and Loss, Homophobia, M/M, Memories of HIV Pandemic, Mild Kink, Reference to homophobic violence, Restraint, Slight AU but follows cannon, Slow Burn, Trans Character, Transphobia, bi character, canon minor character death, slight D/s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:08:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27936037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pebbles1971/pseuds/pebbles1971
Summary: John is about as out as a gay man in the USAF can be. Rodney McKay is a puzzle he's determined to crack.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Comments: 40
Kudos: 81





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a fic where John has been out as gay since forever and has always been part of a queer community, because he's so often written as clueless about his sexuality and I thought it would be good to write an out and happily so Shep, with a big queer backstory. So here he is. And of course, because this is John Sheppard, there are ways in which he's still clueless.
> 
> Since David Hewlett has admitted he played McKay as autistic, I consider it canon that he is, so no apologies that this is yet another Autistic!McKay fic, although that's really incidental to this story. 
> 
> Spoilers for series 1 Hot Zone, The Defiant One, series 2, Coup d’etat, series 3 Common Ground, McKay & Mrs Miller, The Return pt 1
> 
> This work is dedicated to my favourite head scritcher - thanks for all the great feedback! I hope you like the new ending.
> 
> Thanks also to jdskeletion and notenuffcaffeine for the beta reading
> 
> Content note: The prologue opens with fear of and memories of homophobic violence

John Sheppard pulled the neck of his flight suit up against the cold blast of air coming through the hangar doors. Some days, he hated the cold here at McMurdo, it made the simplest things complicated, like right now how his thick gloves were fumbling with a clipboard and pen for the world’s most boring inventory. But he couldn’t deny he liked the peace. 

Right up until the moment it shattered.

‘Well, if it ain’t Major John “Three Dollar Bill” Sheppard,’ a voice came from behind him. 

John stiffened, his senses reaching out to figure if this was going to be a one-on-one fair fight, or another posse kicking him to the ground. He stilled, and waited. Not like there was anything he could do about it. Being gay in the military meant learning to take the beatings. They couldn’t ask and he wouldn’t tell, but a lot of people knew all the same.

A hand rested on his shoulder. John had trained himself not to flinch. But he was ready for what was coming.

‘John.’ The voice was unexpectedly soft. ‘ _ Honey, _ I didn’t mean to spook ya,’ a whisper came close to his ear that turned fear into joy. John turned to find himself looking into an old, familiar face. Full lips, brown skin, curly black hair, and brown eyes so big they were like something out of Disney. 

A jagged scar across one of those eyes reminded John of things he’d rather forget. But it still didn’t change his delight to lay sight on the face that bore it.

‘Salim? What the fuck are you doing here, man?’ John restrained himself from grabbing Salim’s face and just kissing him breathless, but he went in for the regulation half second, one-armed man-hug.

‘Same as you, I expec’ – I hear this is where they ship all the queers they can’t get rid of.’ This riled John – Salim spoke five different languages and really lived up to the “best and brightest” tagline. He was wasted in this frozen desert.

‘That sucks, man, I’m sorry.’

‘Hey, it was always a risk – and it ain’t Leavenworth. How you manage to be so open about it and still stay in, I’ll never know.’

‘I know where the line is, and I surf along it like it’s a perfect wave,’ John grinned.

‘One of these days it’ll be wipeout and you know it,’ Salim retorted.

‘Not so far,’ John said with a shrug. Though he suspected his charmed life was mostly to do with the big, fat trust fund just itching to be put to use in the cause of a civil rights case against the US military. Not that it had protected him any from 16 years of every kind of homophobic bullying.

‘Heard about the black mark – that was some bullshit, right there,’ Salim’s outrage on John’s behalf warmed him. ‘The only thing they could stick on you, I’m guessing?’

‘Precisely that, my friend, precisely that.’ John sighed, but then brightened. ‘But more fool them, I didn’t take the hint to leave, and instead got sent to the biggest party school on the planet.’ 

‘So I hear – McMurdo’s got quite the reputation for its nightlife.’

‘One way of putting it,’ John smirked.

‘Care to give me an orientation?’ Salim’s voice was loaded with innuendo and John felt the warmth of the man’s smile spread heat though his body. God, John had missed this guy. There were two things he knew for sure about Salim – one was he was the bravest man John had ever met, both for his service record and what had gone before. The other was that whenever the two of them were in the same vicinity, they flowed together like liquids in an uncomplicated, unhurried way that never failed to make John’s days better. 

‘Oh yeah.’ John smiled his best dirty grin. ‘Food first, or after?’

Salim chuckled. ‘Tough choice – but honestly, Shep, you look good enough to eat.’

‘So let’s go,’ John packed up and led the way to his quarters. 

The brass had made the ultimate mistake at McMurdo – shipped so many malcontents down here they had each other’s backs over most things, including what personnel got up to in private. Here in the cold, John had found a measure of freedom, both in the air and on his downtime.

‘So, why do you stay in after all that shit, like a stubborn bastard?’ Salim asked as they walked.

‘Because, my friend, I’m still pissed at Clinton for DADT and I’m not done fighting.’ John retorted, his face set a little harder.

*** 

‘You’re really gone on this Rodney guy, John. That’s, like the fifth time I’ve heard his name in two days.’ Salim was lying back in John’s bed, his legs over John’s, idly tracing figure eights on Lieutenant Mark Jefferson’s skin as he talked. Mark was a newcomer to McMurdo, a pretty blond from Louisiana, and John and Salim had argued over which of them would go after him first. They’d settled on this excellent compromise. The man currently lay between them, and slightly across Salim’s lap, looking dazed and covered in a sheen of sweat. 

The three of them were spent, but Salim was always pushing for more. Jefferson leaned over and kissed him lazily, then turned and kissed John.

‘Mmm, I like you, Jefferson, I think we should keep you,’ John said. ‘As for McKay, I’ve met sandpaper that’s less abrasive. Plus, my dance card is full enough, doncha think?’

‘What colour are his eyes, John?’ Salim replied obliquely.

‘Blue,’ John said without even thinking about it. They were the same blue, in fact, as the glow from that crazy chair John had sat in.

‘Mmm-hmm,’ Salim grinned, and John rolled his eyes. ‘What do you think, Jefferson?’

‘I think you should get me off again and stop worrying about this McKay guy . . . who you obviously have the hots for, by the way. But he’s not here and I am, and in case you hadn’t noticed, my eyes are also blue.’

‘Oh,’ John blushed, taking the point. Maybe there was something about McKay, though. Although maybe he just seemed exciting because  _ aliens _ and  _ mind-powered tech _ and  _ travel to another galaxy. _

It was a heady brew and John couldn’t make up his mind what to do about it. Life was pretty sweet here. He extricated himself from their tangle of limbs and crawled over to straddle Jefferson. Salim turned his attention to John, running a hand over his friend’s body.

‘Well, I dunno what secrets they’re keeping up there, John, but if you ask me you gotta follow this guy on whatever crazy mission it is you can’t talk about,’ Salim said, scooting up behind John and nibbling kisses along his neck and shoulders while his hands carded through the ample hair on John’s torso, moving slowly downward. ‘Professionally and personally? Man’s got you hooked.’


	2. Year One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McKay had been finding a lot of excuses to spend time with John, and John couldn’t deny he was increasingly warming to the man, despite his abrasiveness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hays is a blink-and-you'll-miss him canon character, but I liked his face.
> 
> Content warning: bereavement, past and present.

‘Hey, Major, they tell me you play a passable game of chess, for an Air Force grunt, I wondered if I could interest you in a game?’

Rodney had approached John in the mess, Zelenka’s travel set clutched in front of him.

This was promising. McKay had been finding a lot of excuses to spend time with John, and John couldn’t deny he was increasingly warming to the man, despite his abrasiveness. He  _ liked _ Rodney – more than liked, really, but given he’d just asked the man onto his team John wasn’t going to risk team dynamics for a roll in the hay. Still, he could see himself playing the long game with Rodney and thought there was a possibility McKay was worth putting the extra effort in for. 

‘I’m a pilot, McKay – not a grunt,’ John said, his mouth severe but his eyes laughing.

‘Pilot, smilot, you’re all grunts to me,’ McKay grinned.

‘Tell me that again when I beat your ass at chess,’ John grinned back, kicking out a chair for Rodney to sit in. And yeah, there was a definite spark here, but he was in no hurry. Since coming to Atlantis, he’d been like a monk, and necessarily so. It wasn’t that anyone here gave a crap about the Uniform Code, it was just that little thing where he had a lot of lives depending on him, not least those of the scientists. He’d figured out seconds after shooting Sumner that it was time to straighten up and fly right.   
  
Okay, maybe  _ straighten up _ wasn’t quite the right term to apply to John, but he’d certainly gotten very serious very quickly. 

But even so, a little flirting wouldn’t harm anyone.

‘Oh, you’re on,’ Rodney said, sitting eagerly and setting up the board with those deft, sturdy fingers, which John watched with a tiny shiver of want.

_ Damn _ , John caught himself daydreaming about all the things he’d love Rodney’s hands to do to him and had to admit Salim had been right from the start about his thing for McKay.

Or maybe he just wasn’t getting any. 

He tore his eyes away from fixating on Rodney’s hands and brought them up to the other man’s face, only to find himself caught by those blue eyes. McKay half-smiled at him, somewhat quizzically, and John felt just a little naked. But then the moment passed, John picked black from the pieces concealed in Rodney’s grip and McKay quickly moved his first piece.

‘Although can I say how massively offensive “white always goes first” is as a concept?’ McKay observed as the two of them zipped through a fairly rote set of opening moves.

‘You have a point,’ John replied, feeling comforted that Rodney cared about being right on. He hadn’t come out to the man yet, but his sense was Rodney would at least be accepting, if not queer himself. John couldn’t quite read him on that score, but the man was Canadian and that generally meant more tolerant than their US cousins.

Forty minutes later, he had McKay in check and John was delighted to see the surprised, pleased look in McKay’s eyes at the discovery he’d met his match. 

‘You really are more than just a pretty face,’ Rodney said with a grin.

‘You think I have a pretty face?’ John grinned back.

McKay just rolled his eyes. ‘Major, you being a pretty boy is as undisputable as Newton’s third law.’

‘Why thank you, Dr McKay, I’m flattered,’ John batted his eyelids slightly, and Rodney punched him amiably on the arm.

They played another game, and this time Rodney beat John in 55 minutes. John felt somewhat satisfied that at least he’d made McKay work for it. 

‘I win! I win! In your face, Sheppard!’ McKay gloated.

‘Gracious winner much McKay?’ John teased. 

‘No time for it – I learned young that if I don’t draw attention to my achievements, they get overlooked.’

He said it so casually, but something about that statement really hurt John’s heart.

‘That sucks,’ he responded, suddenly serious. 

Rodney’s eyes lifted to his and seemed surprised to find empathy there. ‘Yeah. Yeah, it did. It does.’

They went for best of three, and John thrashed him. John was feeling a little gloaty himself and Rodney was superficially chagrinned but clearly with an undercurrent of delight that made something in John fizz with possibility. He watched as those hands he was quickly becoming fixated on packed away the pieces.

‘Ew, gross!’ McKay suddenly exclaimed, peering at the pawn in his hand. 

John couldn’t see what was bothering Rodney, so he reached for the man’s wrist and drew his hand, and the offending chess piece, nearer. As it got closer, he could see teeth marks in the plastic.

‘Honestly, it’s like having a toddler, or a pet rodent – everything gets chewed! I swear there isn’t a pen left in the science department without Zelenka’s teeth marks.’

John laughed, letting go of Rodney’s wrist maybe a touch too late. ‘I used to date a guy in college that did that – drove me nuts,’ he said, watching for McKay’s reaction to this revelation.

McKay seemed to freeze at these words, and he fumbled the set he was packing away, scattering the pieces across the table.

_ Fuck _ . McKay’s sudden jumpiness wasn’t exactly the reaction John was looking for. John helped Rodney pack up the pieces, but the other man wouldn’t meet his eyes. As soon as he’d packed the set away, he stood hurriedly.

‘Well, thank you, Major – good game,’ he said, still failing to make eye contact, and with that he scooted away at an almost indecent speed.

And today had started so well, John thought sadly.

***   
  
It was their first mission as an official gate team – Ford, Teyla, Rodney and John; AR-1. They’d identified an easy target – allies and trading partners of the Athosians, the Rexars, who were friendly and willing to trade with the New Lanteans.

‘Kal, their leader, is a dear friend. She will be helpful in ensuring your reputation as trading partners,’ Teyla told them as they approached the settlement – a wide circle of stone houses surrounding an immaculate village green. The settlement was situated in a spectacular landscape – a rich river plain patchworked with fields and orchards, set between white-capped mountains and a vast, heaving ocean.

The planet’s day was longer than an earth week, and their gravity was a touch on the high side. By the time AR-1 arrived, it was the middle of their long afternoon. The light was intense, making everything look overexposed, and their limbs were heavy from the gravity. The ninety-degree heat wasn’t helping any.

‘Teyla! It is so good to see you!’ An androgynous-looking person came striding out of one of the buildings. Brown skin, almond eyes, high cheekbones – a striking face that John was immediately drawn to. Their curly hair was cut short, and they wore a simple sleeveless shift, with leggings. They were flanked by two men, both of whom wore more ornate robes, and had shaven heads.

‘Kal, it is good to see you!’ Teyla greeted her friend with the customary forehead-touch, and John adjusted his pronouns, recalling Teyla had referred to Kal as “she”, turning to Kal with an open smile as he was introduced to her. He did his “peaceful explorers looking to make friends” speech, and Kal responded with easy warmth. John was drawn to her instantly, and not just because of her apparent queerness. He suspected she was the Pegasus equivalent of a trans woman, and he couldn’t help but be curious, although he parked his curiosity as more citizens filed out, wanting to meet the newcomers. John noticed that all the women had short hair and simple clothes. The men were definitely the peacocks here, but the women ruled the roost.

He watched Rodney stiffen at his side when Kal was introduced to him and felt a wave of disappointment in the man. Rodney had better not let his queerphobia sour the trade deal. But he seemed to recover quickly and spoke to Kal as politely as McKay ever managed. 

Well, at least he was trying.

‘Come eat with us!’ Kal invited them, and all around them people went running into houses, reemerging with cloths to lay on the ground and spreading out a picnic on the green. The leader sat herself beside Rodney, and John’s heart was in his mouth, but to his credit, McKay managed to be almost charming – it was as close to seeing Rodney click with someone as John had ever seen, and that just puzzled him all the more.

John soon realised why Teyla had been so eager for AR-1 to meet the Rexars. Kal had good, up-to-date intel on dozens of worlds – who was looking to trade, who’d had a good harvest, who needed help. She knew where the most recent culls had been and even proposed a tentative pattern in the cullings. The woman was a goldmine of information, and generous in her sharing. 

Eventually, the talk became less purposeful and more idle as the afternoon warmed and the atmosphere became increasingly relaxed.

‘You must be  _ very _ important, Rodney, to have your leader taste your food for you,’ Kal said at length, as John nodded that the latest morsel was citrus-free.

‘Dr McKay is the cleverest man around, where we come from,’ Ford said, with obvious pride, ‘but that’s not why we taste his food.’

Teyla explained Rodney’s allergy to Kal and the woman nodded in understanding. ‘Ah yes, I see. I cannot keep sooffies as pets for similar reasons,’ she pointed to an animal sauntering across the green; it looked like a cross between a wombat and a racoon. ‘My eyes go puffy and my throat closes, it is most distressing, because I do so adore them.’

‘Oh my god, we are totally going to trade you some antihistamines from Carson to fix that problem!’ Rodney beamed at her. ‘Nobody should have to go without furry companions. I left my pet cat back in Colorado – the place I lived before we came exploring – and I miss him terribly.’

Kal gave Rodney a look of sympathy, and John decided that this just summed up the perverseness that was Rodney McKay – the man was the most socially inept person he’d ever met, and yet here he was bonding with a stranger from another galaxy over cats from Colorado. 

And he seemed to have lost any qualms about Kal’s gender identity, too.

John finally let himself relax, and nibble at another one of those pastries he was pretty sure were mildly soporific. The sun was hot, the gravity dragged him down into the close-cut grass, and he decided he may as well enjoy the moment.

He looked around to see Teyla flirting outrageously with a pretty man named Shalga, while a woman named Dan explained to Ford how they divided their time and when they slept (unsurprisingly, afternoon naps were a big thing here, as were morning and midday ones).

‘My back kills me sitting on the ground like this,’ McKay said, fidgeting beside him. John was already used to Rodney’s moaning; it had become like the wallpaper to his whole new world. Oddly comforting, like that purple flowered monstrosity of a décor his grandma had back in the seventies. Whenever he saw that wallpaper, he knew he was safe. Rodney’s moaning was like that, somehow. 

‘Make nice, McKay,’ John gently chided him.

‘I am making nice!’ Rodney’s voice was indignant. ‘It’s just . . . well, it would help if I could lean on something, and you look . . . sturdy.’

John snorted so hard he choked a little on his flowery-tasting cold tea. He looked at McKay’s solid, bulky frame – those thick arms and broad shoulders, and then down at his own narrow body and pulled a bemused face. ‘Sturdy? If you say so. But sure, lean away.’ Something inside him flickered, but it didn’t stay long enough for John to recognise. It could have been anxiety, it could have been desire. Maybe both.

Rodney sighed in apparent gratitude and turned a little away from John, propping his back up against John’s side. It felt . . . dammit, it felt nice, and John experienced a wave of relief that Rodney had gotten over his homophobic panic or whatever the hell that had been. Rodney’s body put out heat like a radiator and he smelled of sunscreen and a bit of sweat and solder, and John felt more than a little overwhelmed by his proximity. 

One thing was for good and sure, the man was doing really odd things to John’s gaydar – the needle on his compass was spinning wildly.

_ You’re a puzzle, McKay,  _ John thought. Ah well, there was probably time to figure it out before they all died a hideous death a long way from home. On this peaceful, heavy, too-bright, too-warm afternoon, with his sort-of-friend pressed reassuringly against him, such thoughts didn’t have their usual bite. He could almost imagine being happy in this fucked up galaxy.

‘It’s nice here,’ Rodney said, a little wistfully.

‘Yeah,’ John replied, letting himself sink just a touch more into his friend.

The picnic went on for a couple of hours, and it was of course still mid-afternoon when they finished. Teyla was given a wrap of the pastries, and Ford, Rodney and John were all handed baskets of fruit as an opener to a promise of future exchanges. They trudged back towards the gate feeling weary and apathetic, but content. John took their six and allowed himself to idly contemplate the man trudging languidly in front of him. The afternoon heat had if anything grown in intensity, and Rodney was kind of melting. 

It really shouldn’t have been attractive, but John was beginning to realise when it came to McKay he was exhibiting strange tendencies.

They came back through the gate and headed for the kit lockers. John noticed Rodney’s uniform was soaked with sweat when he peeled off his tac vest and unloaded his P90.

‘Time to hit the showers,’ John said, wiping sweat off his face with a sleeve, and clapping Rodney on the shoulder. Even Teyla was heading for the communal showers – John had already discovered the Athosians were pretty relaxed about nudity when she had peeled off her clothes right in front of him when they returned from the rescue mission to the hive ship.

‘Oh, erm, I think I’ll just shower back in my quarters,’ Rodney said, not meeting John’s eyes.

Well, fuck.

***

It went on like that with McKay – overtures of friendship followed by nasty little jabs of rejection and glimpses of discomfort with John that stank of homophobia, until John honestly thought he was going to go crazy from it. One minute he thought he had a friend, and then Rodney was all shifty and John withdrew into himself, fed up with being hurt by straight guys who couldn’t decide if it was okay to have a queer buddy. Maybe Rodney was afraid it was catching. If John’s wonky gaydar was correct, there was at least a chance that it actually might be – or at least a chance Rodney might catch a clue. 

But John wasn’t waiting around. He had no intention of turning back to his old, slutty ways when he had so much responsibility, but he found himself drawn to an engineer called Lucas Hays and they got pretty close, pretty quick. Lucas was cute in a gay-boy-next-door kind of way, as well as off the scale smart and more emotionally intelligent than John on his best day. It was fun, uncomplicated but not meaningless. And Lucas was a damn good listener, which was more than John could say for Kate, the resident psychologist.

‘I’m so over my head, Luke,’ John told his lover one night, his voice slurring from the liquor he’d smuggled back from P4X-581. His head was resting on Lucas’ torso as they sat out on a secluded balcony on a warm evening. The other man was running his fingers through John’s hair, which was John’s favourite thing ever. ‘This whole Genii thing is a clusterfuck. They’re the most powerful group we’ve met so far in this galaxy, and I just killed around sixty of them. I feel like I’m flailing.’

‘That’s because you are, sweetie,’ Lucas said with his usual directness.

‘Oh, thanks for the reassurance.’

‘No . . . hear me out here. You’re not the only one. McKay’s flailing, Weir’s flailing, Grodin’s flailing, Zelenka’s flailing, hell even Bates is flailing.  _ I’m  _ flailing. Everyone but Teyla is, in fact and that’s only because that woman has unnatural amounts of poise. This whole expedition is on a wing and a prayer and we’re all in fear for our lives. Some of us are bound to die. We can’t afford to be cautious and conservative; we have to take unnecessary risks and some of those risks are going to be fuck-ups. And as military commander, the biggest fuck-ups are going to be yours. I wouldn’t be in your shoes for all the world, John.’

‘Once again, thanks for the reassurance, bud,’ John said sarcastically. But Lucas’ words were oddly comforting. He’d known it from the moment he was forced to shoot Sumner: all rules were out of the window and all bets were off. He was acting on instinct and instinct wasn’t always right, but it was all he had in these uncharted territories. Going back to the rulebook each time would get them dead quicker than any of his screwups ever would.

John turned over onto his front and heaved up onto his elbows to kiss his lover. He was so grateful for this, the comfort and closeness made being so far from home almost bearable. Atlantis was beautiful; he didn’t think he could leave her if he ever had the choice, her pull on him was so great, but she was deadly and the galaxy she resided in deadlier still. The ordinariness of having a boyfriend to come home to when all was done brought everything down to a manageable size.

The kiss deepened.

‘Think we should go in?’ Lucas asked, running a hand down Johns back to his ass. 

‘Oh yeah,’ John said, with a lascivious grin.

*** 

‘Hey, Major, come sit with us!’ McKay said in the mess one day. Which was nice, because he was sitting with Luke and Radek, as well as Ford, and John wouldn’t have sat with his lover otherwise. His sexuality might be an open secret, but he was still discreet about his lovers.

‘Oh, do you know each other? Lucas Hays, Major John Sheppard.’

_ Yeah Rodney, I had the man’s cock in my mouth last night . . . _

John tried to make his smile at Luke friendly rather than lecherous. The man was looking particularly cute in his well-fitting green-grey uniform shirt. He might be the only man in Atlantis who was making their godawful uniforms work for him, probably because the engineers had the only flattering colour. John often wondered if the designer had been a Trekkie, and thanked god he didn’t have to wander around in yellow or red. At least he looked good in black. And Johnny would approve.

‘Yeah, I’ve seen you around,’ John said to Luke, ‘technician, right?’

Luke smiled his best innocent smile, ‘engineer.’

‘Oh. Well, good to meet you, Luke -as,’ John quickly corrected his shortening of the name.

‘Actually, Major, it’s handy seeing you,’ McKay interjected. ‘The science and engineering team are going to be starting to survey the storm-damage in the outer parts of the city, I need to borrow some marines. I was just asking Ford.’

‘Don’t we have to check out that satellite thingy? And first help the Rexars?’

‘Yup, this is next month’s work schedule I’m planning. We go to Rexa tomorrow, then we’re checking out the Lagrangian Point satellite with Gall and Abrams, but we really need to not keep bumping the survey down the list. Can you spare the personnel, say, twenty days from now for two weeks?’

‘Sure, take whoever you need, McKay, we’re here to protect you guys, after all,’ John said.

‘Gotta keep all you damsels safe,’ laughed Ford.

John saw a flash of naked fury pass like a cloud across McKay’s face, to be replaced by the more familiar McKay eyeroll and his trademark withering look.

‘Oh, because guns have a gender, I forgot,’ he said. ‘If you listen really carefully, you can hear the faint sound of them farting and watching sports.’

Ooh, burn. Score one to McKay. John exchanged a looked with Lucas and grinned.

Teyla had just joined them and she may have been glaring a little at Ford, who had the decency to look sheepish.

‘I am not sure I understand your use of “damsels” in this context, perhaps you could explain it to me, lieutenant?’ Teyla asked, giving Ford her eyebrow of doom.

Ford just mumbled and looked sheepish.

‘I  _ think _ Ford was trying to say that scientists are weak and helpless, in the same way that women are weak and helpless,’ Rodney helpfully explained. ‘Understandable, given the scientists have been sitting around since we arrived in Pegasus waiting for people to save us. Oh no, wait, that would be  _ you lot. _ ’ He jabbed a finger at Ford, and John found that he had been once again watching those expressive hands with an intensity that was probably inappropriate.

Still,  _ damn _ . Score two-nil to McKay. This was better than TV.

‘I see,’ said Teyla. ‘Lieutenant, I would be happy to discuss my helplessness in a sparring session tonight?’

Poor Ford. He had the sense to mumble an apology and withdraw, and the others smirked a little.

‘Man knows when he’s beat,’ Lucas said, his eyes subtly moving from John’s face to McKay’s hands then back again and smirking at his lover in acknowledgement of John’s fascination. 

‘So Major, are you with Ford?’ Rodney asked John, ‘do you think someone needs a gun in their hand to be a real man?’ Rodney’s voice was tight. Despite the verbal victory, he was clearly rattled, and John had a sense there was something going on here that he was entirely missing.

‘I don’t even know what a “real man” is, Rodney,’ John said thoughtfully, ‘but no, I don’t feel more manly when I pick up a gun, nor do I feel less manly when Teyla kicks my ass.’ He looked over to Teyla. ‘And, by the way, I’m going to hold Ford to that sparring session.’  _ And have a quiet word with him about his sexist attitudes _ , he added to himself.

‘So what does make someone a real man?’ Rodney pressed him.

‘I dunno, having a dick? Hell if I know really.’ John thought this was a sensible response, but Rodney’s frown said differently – that sloping mouth was veering towards 45 degrees.

‘And if you got your dick blown clean off tomorrow, would you no longer be a man?’

John winced at the thought of that, but then mentally conceded that Rodney had a point. He’d thought he was moving the conversation onto safer ground, but suddenly the earth was crumbling beneath his feet. 

‘Okay, fair. . . yes, I think I’d still be a man if I lost my dick, Rodney.’  _ Whatever the hell a man is.  _ John could feel himself tensing, something fragile and weird stretching between him and McKay that reminded him of conversations with his father that always ended up with John being in the wrong.

To be fair, though, Patrick Sheppard never looked this unsettled – had always been sure he knew just what a man was, and that his son didn’t qualify.

‘I mean, I don’t know,’ Rodney said, his voice tight, ‘is it the ability to be a cliché of manliness, is it the ability to pee standing up? Is it something to do with being the one that does the fucking?’ 

_ Whoa.  _ McKay couldn’t have pushed John’s buttons harder with that remark if he tried. This probably wasn’t the time or the place to tell Rodney John was an exclusive bottom, and had never fucked anyone in his whole damn life. Time was, he’d maybe thought that made him less of a man, but not anymore. Then again, during the HIV pandemic it had been safer to get fucked with fists, fingers, dildos (and on one memorable occasion, a bat belonging to a relatively famous baseball star). That didn’t make his lovers any less manly, either, as far as John was concerned.

John really didn’t understand what conversation he was in right now, though, or whether his manhood was in question, but he certainly felt he was failing the test on some level he didn’t understand. 

‘I can’t answer your question. I’ll stick with my “I don’t know” and leave it to you science guys to sort out.’ His throat was threatening to close up and he really didn’t want to be in this conversation any more. He stood up, trying to make his exit graceful rather than the panicked retreat it was. ‘Anyway I gotta head off, get the jumpers ready for Rexa.’

He slipped away, feeling oddly dissected. What answer McKay had been looking for and why, he didn’t know, but his instinct told him it came from the same place as that homophobic vibe that he was still sometimes getting from McKay. Only perhaps it was something more complicated and thorny than simple homophobia. It was like the man was trying to be open-minded but something in him was locked down way too tight.

***

‘I think she’s sweet on McKay,’ Luke said to John conspiratorially as they watched Kal lean into Rodney’s space, peering at the diagrams he’d drawn out for her and the Rexar scientists. She kept looking at Rodney with her big almond eyes, cocking her head in too-rapt attention.

‘Can’t see that happening,’ John shook his head. He could see Kal’s interest, but he was certain McKay was far too straight-laced to date a trans woman, however lovely Kal was.

Luke gave him a puzzled frown at that but didn’t respond. In any case Rodney was gesturing to them both to join him and the Rexars. 

AR-1 and a team of engineers had been back on Rexa for over 40 hours, up against the ticking clock of an impending natural disaster.

They’d visited the planet a few times over the months. It had become a popular spot for R&R as well as trade and a good source of Pegasus intel. This time, though, they were all business. The Rexars’ main settlement was threatened with severe flooding by a rapidly melting glacier, which in turn was the result of unusual solar activity. The meltwater was currently pooled behind a dam of ice, but any day now it was likely to burst, and sweep across the river plain.

While McKay was tasked with figuring out just what the Rexars were in for long-term, the engineers were busy helping them erect flood defences. John was delighted to discover the flexible little puddlejumpers could be used as earth movers – he’d wanted to drive a digger since he was four and a half. The Ancients had provided what were effectively space trucks with these handy scoop attachments, and they could shift a whole lot of earth and rock in an astonishingly short time. They had found only two of these scoops, so they pressed jumpers one and two into service, with John and Markham doing the piloting. 

It was still going to take the best part of a long Rexa day to shield the village completely, and meanwhile the ice wall holding back the meltwater was getting thinner by the hour. They worked relentlessly against the clock, despite their extra fatigue caused by the heavy gravity. None of them wanted their friends and allies to lose their homes, crops and livestock. 

‘Okay,’ Rodney said, his lips tight. ‘Here are the figures for the rate of warming.’ John and Luke looked over the figures and both exhaled simultaneously.

‘Not good,’ John acknowledged.

‘We need to evacuate. Now.’ Lucas said bluntly.

‘But we don’t even know what is causing this!’ Kal said desperately.

‘I have an inkling, but I’m going to need to take a trip out into the solar system to be sure.’ Rodney said. ‘Major . . .’

‘Sure, Rodney, I can take you up. Soon as we get these people evacuated.’ Turning to Kal, he added, ‘I suggest you go up to the plateau – if the warming becomes significant, it will be cooler up there. That at least buys you time. We can provide you with temporary structures if you don’t have anything.’ 

Kal set her lips in a frown. ‘We have tents. But I don’t want to send my people from their homes – make them camp up in the cold.’

‘We just can’t be sure we’ll get the defences strong enough in time,’ Luke insisted. ‘And we’re still not sure how much worse things are going to get.’ 

Kal ran her fingers through her short, curly hair and pressed her lips together. ‘I trust you and Rodney, Lucas. You’ll make it safe.’

‘If you trust me, then listen when I say it’s too unpredictable, and I need you to evacuate,’ Luke said firmly.

Kal looked at Rodney imploringly. 

‘Oh, don’t look at me,’ Rodney said, ‘I’m too busy trying to find what caused this problem – Hays knows what he’s talking about when it comes to making your village safe. You should do what he advises, Kal.’ McKay was oddly gentle in how he said that last bit, and it got John curious – Kal did seem to be winning him over, as a friend at least.

They ferried the people to camps on a plateau in the centre of the mountain range, but Kal refused to leave her village, and a team of local engineers and scientists stayed with her.

In between reshaping the Rexa landscape, Rodney pressed John into taking him into space to survey the solar system. Griffin took over the earthmoving from John and they took jumper three up. After over 48 hours (that on Rexa time took them from early morning to the middle of the day) of no sleep, Rodney was getting a bit ragged around the edges. Which with McKay meant pissy with a side order of grumpy.

‘How about you go and have a nap while these tests are running?’ John asked, feeling like he was bargaining with a small child. ‘And here – eat something first. He shoved one of the Rexar’s pastries into Rodney’s hand. Rodney’s hypoglycemia made his moods less well balanced, John had noticed.

Rodney went into the back, but moments later he cried out in distress. John whirled round to see Rodney standing stock still in the middle of the jumper, his body tense, holding the pastry away from him with an appalled look on his face. The pastry had been bitten into, and had bled blueish sauce over Rodney’s hand.

‘Fuck, is it citrus?’ John had the EpiPen out in under a second.

‘No . . . it’s sticky!’ Rodney said in horrified tones, then looked instantly ashamed.

Just like that, John flashed back seventeen years to him and Ray sitting on the porch seat on a warm, mellow September day. Their hands were tangled surreptitiously together and they were drinking Coke and eating peanut M&Ms. Ray’s little brother Colin was playing right where they could keep an eye on him, because even though Colin was 16, he needed to be watched. The boy had picked up a handful of branches and sticks that had come down in the storm and was building an odd structure in the middle of the lawn with them.

Suddenly, Colin was  _ screaming _ and no matter what, they couldn’t figure why or calm him down. Colin couldn’t talk, although sometimes John figured he was brighter than everyone thought he was.

There’d been half an hour of meltdown and Colin banging his head with his hand before they finally realised he had got tree sap on himself and couldn’t bear the feeling.

Later that night they were fooling around in Ray’s car up on the bluff and Ray suddenly said, ‘I think I’m like Colin. I mean, it may not seem like it, but I know how it feels – certain sensations everyone else seems to deal with? They make me crawl out of my fucking skin.’

Over the next year they found thirty-one different things that made Ray feel every bit as bad as John felt when he touched polyester or Colin had felt that day with the tree sap. And that was  _ bad.  _ They’d noticed other things, too – how Ray couldn’t always figure out what people meant and didn’t always know to be careful with what he said. 

Back then, they didn’t think Ray was  _ allowed _ the word autistic – that was what Colin was. But John knew now that was exactly what Ray was, and he was beginning to wonder about Rodney. Because the bluntness, the sensory issues, the incredible, brilliant focus the man had – it all fitted. And  _ of course _ John would be drawn to anyone who reminded him of Ray. He ignored the way his throat tightened.

‘Hey,’ he said, his voice soothing, ‘it’s okay if that’s a sensory yuk for you.’  _ And you’re too tired and your blood sugar is too low to mask how you really feel.  _ Ray had always felt better if the problem was named.

Rodney looked at John, eyes wide with shock that he understood.

‘Here,’ John said, pulling the clean hanky out of his pocket (there were no tissues or wet wipes in Pegasus, and damn, how he missed little things like that). He spotted some water from his canteen onto it, passing it to the scientist. McKay looked pathetically grateful and painfully young, and John would’ve given anything to be able to soothe him with a tight hug as he would have done with Ray.

The relief in McKay’s eyes as he mopped up the sticky sauce was palpable. He wrapped the remainder of the pastry in the hanky and finished it, the tension bleeding out of him as he ate.

‘Sleep.’ John insisted. Dropping a hand carefully on Rodney’s shoulder and squeezing. Rodney seemed to relax more at John’s firm touch and he nodded, mutely, stretching out on one of the benches.

John closed the compartment and left Rodney to sleep. An old, familiar melancholy settled over him as he thought about Ray. He circled his arms around himself and tried to think about solar readings and not about a long dead lover.

***

John had left Rodney to sleep as long as possible, but eventually he had to rouse the sleepy, fuzzy scientist from his slumber when the readings were done. He shoved an MRE coffee and a power bar at the other man. Rodney roused himself astonishingly quickly, tapping away at his tablet and soon enough issuing a big ‘Aha!’

‘Figured it out?’

‘Yes . . . thank you, Major, you can take us back.’

‘Is it bad, Rodney?’ Kal picked up Rodney’s frown when he met with her and the scientists, a flash of fear sweeping across her striking, androgynous face, her brown eyes looking to McKay in silent appeal.

‘What? No! No, it’s . . . manageable, predictable and finite.’

‘Maybe you could explain exactly what “it” is, McKay,’ John prompted.

‘Oh. Yes, sorry. Okay, we’re looking at the irregular movement of the sun in relation to this planet.’

‘Now now Rodney, I am not so simple as you believe. Everyone knows planets move around suns, not the other way around,’ Kal chided.

‘Correct!’ Rodney gave her a small smile, and continued, ‘but you see, it might seem like suns are static, but in fact they’re also moving through space, and in this case, in a corkscrew motion.’ 

Kal frowned at this reference, and Rodney clarified, ‘a spiral, a twist . . .’ she brightened, and nodded.

‘So what does that mean for Rexa?’ she asked.

‘Well, this subtly shifts the movement of the entire solar system over a cycle that takes about three hundred of Rexa’s years, bringing your planet a little closer to the sun than usual at intervals in that cycle.’

Rexa had a long solar cycle, so John calculated that would be over a millennium on Earth.

Kal’s face brightened with realisation. ‘Oh, this makes sense now, the tales of a great flood many generations ago,’ Kal said. ‘If what you’re saying is true, this is all part of a natural cycle, and not a worsening disaster that has no end in sight.’ Her face was flushed with relief and more than a little gratitude.

‘That’s right,’ Rodney affirmed, ‘this will be nothing your people haven’t been through in the past.’

‘So how near are we to the peak of this phenomenon?’ she asked, frowning again. ‘How bad will it be before it gets better?’

‘We’re close,’ Rodney assured her. ‘I calculate 5.6 more days.’ Rodney said.

_ About 47 Earth days,  _ John calculated.

‘That sounds like we’re definitely gonna lose the glacier,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Rodney agreed. ‘But it shouldn’t get bad enough to trigger other long-term damage to the ecosystem, according to Parrish. Looking at core samples from soil and ice, the planet has recovered quickly from these incidents in the past, and the archeological and historical record shows no permanent migration in response to the events. It’s only because of the shift in the river course across the flood plain that the flooding presents such a major problem this time around.’

Kal curled her arms around Rodney, and a surprised, pleased look flew across his face. ‘We’re so grateful to you.  _ I’m  _ so grateful to you. All of you,’ she said, glancing at John, but her brown, almond eyes kept going back to McKay.

Luke just glanced at John and raised his eyebrows.

A rumble in the distance distracted all of them.

‘The glacier!’ Kal said, eyes widening.

‘Into the jumper everyone,’ John said, and they scrambled for jumper three, while John radioed Markham and Griffin to take up the engineers out on the defences. They looked up to the glacier, saw it crumbling from a dam into a waterfall before their eyes.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Luke as they rose above the plain and watched the wall of water sweep down towards the settlement. Nobody was left on the ground, but there were still the homes of hundreds of people, all their possession, the crops and stores that would feed them through the coming year, the livestock in their fields. 

The flood defences they’d built looked puny against the force of water.

‘It’s not gonna hold,’ Luke said, his voice edged with despair.

‘It’ll hold. You know what you’re doing,’ Rodney said confidently. This was Luke’s area of expertise, and for all McKay told others they were idiots and simpletons, at his core he had faith in the abilities of his scientists and engineers. Besides, he’d checked over Luke’s plans thoroughly.

John wanted to reach out and hold Luke’s hand as they watched the wave sweep down. It was higher than the embankments they’d created – much higher. He didn’t see how this would work. 

They had built two ditches with embankments beyond them, set at a diagonal to the oncoming wave. The water hit the first defence and obliterated it, turning the swirl of white into a sludgy brown. John couldn’t believe the ease with which a days’ work vanished in seconds, carried away as if it was nothing.

‘Fuck!’ he exclaimed, but Rodney smiled, unexpectedly and inexplicably. ‘Good work, Luke – that’s taken most of the energy out of it.’

Sure enough, as the wave came to the second embankment, it had slowed down. The water ran into the deeper ditch and began to allow itself to be channeled away from the settlement. Instead of a raging wall, the meltwater spread out into a great pool, lapping at the bank but not destroying it.

‘It’s going to breach!’ Luke’s voice was disappointed, but less alarmed this time.

‘Yeah, those cows are going to get wet feet.’ McKay’s voice was almost lighthearted. Sure enough, the water washed over the top of the embankment, but not as a wave. The main force of water carried oceanwards and the settlement suffered no more than a shallow pool on lower ground. The houses and barns remained dry, surrounded by a lake that quickly settled in but did not rise, draining away through streams and gullies as quickly as it was fed. The livestock in the fields waded to find islands of dry land but remained safe.

And in moments the danger had passed. The embankment held, the meltwater softened from a fierce deluge to a steadier flow that the ditch contained and diverted out towards the ocean.

Kal flung her arms around Luke, and kissed his cheek, and then embraced Rodney, tucking her forehead into his neck quite intimately. Rodney accepted the embrace with a shy smile. 

While everyone was congratulating each other, John snuck Luke a brief, chaste kiss. God, he loved brainy men.

*** 

‘Hey,’ McKay had found John out on the end of one of the piers, and John really didn’t know how. He hadn’t wanted to be found.

‘Hey,’ he said, hating how miserable and lost he sounded. Rodney was the last person in Atlantis he wanted to see his grief.

‘Look, I wanted to say I’m sorry,’ Rodney said, sounding sincere. ‘About Hays. When it happened . . . well, I thought I was going with him, and I was too frightened to think much of anything right there and then, but . . .’

‘Get to the point, McKay,’ John snapped, impatient, not wanting to listen. He’d already heard this – how if Luke had gone for the ATA gene therapy the nanovirus might not have killed him. How he’d died, screaming and terrified, while McKay counted the seconds expecting to be next, but had survived. It didn’t matter now. Dead was dead.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Rodney said, sounding almost as dejected as John felt. Well, the man had lost a lot of his team members to the nanovirus, and that was hot on the heels of Gall and Abrams. John hadn’t lost as many military as McKay had lost scientists, and he felt every death. He softened a bit, remembering what Luke had said, how they were all flailing here, McKay as much as anyone. And yet it was McKay’s brain that was pulling them through more often than anything else; McKay they looked to for answers to unsolvable problems.

‘No,  _ I’m _ sorry,’ John said, ‘You lost some good people. It’s fucking tough. But what did you want to say to me?’

‘It took me a while to remember he was your boyfriend. To realise what this would mean for you.’ Rodney said earnestly. ‘I knew – I was covering in front of Ford that day in the mess, but I knew. He really liked you, Major. You meant a lot to him. I think you made him as happy as anyone can be in a galaxy that’s trying so hard to kill us. He was a good guy, and I know you liked him a lot too. So . . . I’m sorry for your loss.’

John could feel hot tears spilling onto his cheeks and he turned away, not wanting Rodney to see. And yet . . . maybe the empathy was welcome. Luke wasn’t the first lover of John’s to die – it was an occupational hazard of being in the military, and prior to that, it had been an occupational hazard of being gay at the height of the HIV pandemic. But John wasn’t really used to people outside of his world giving a crap about his dead lovers, or for that matter, even knowing about them. He hadn’t talked to Luke about Rodney’s discomfort with him, but clearly Luke had had a different experience with McKay, one that allowed him to open up about his relationship with John and feel safe enough to do so.

Damn, he wished he could talk to Luke about this. The finality of knowing he never could made everything in him lurch, as it fully hit home that Luke was gone. The next thing John knew his shoulders were shaking, and there was no way to hide the sobs from Rodney.

‘Oh, hey . . .’ Rodney’s worried voice moved closer, and John could feel a tentative hand at his back, smoothing down between his shoulder blades. It confused the fuck out of him but right now he would take what comfort he could get.

*** 

‘Well . . . a man wonders how he would choose to go out, given such dire circumstances. Now I know.’ Rodney looked not just shaken to hear of his own death but surprised at himself. Like he didn’t know he had it in him. John was equally surprised, taken aback even, but then he remembered the energy creature Rodney had waded into the middle of and something uncomfortable stirred in his gut.

‘Trying to save the lives of others,’ old Elizabeth said.

‘But ultimately failing,’ John was going for a casual taunt but as the words left him John realised the deluge of fury accompanying them added more bite than he intended. He bit down hard on it. There was no time to guess where it came from, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Later, Rodney would get his own back for the comment, and John could feel a familiar, nebulous tension bubbling up between the two of them. He never knew where he was with McKay, or what he was feeling, and it drove him nuts.

‘You have been out of sorts, Major, since discovering the original fate of the expedition,’ Teyla said to John a few days later as she laid into him with Bantos sticks, perhaps a little more viciously than usual.

John caught her look and froze, giving her the chance to take him down with a blow that he was going to feel for days.

‘Oh god, Teyla, I’m so sorry,’ he said as he picked himself off the floor. Why hadn’t he thought about how this would affect Teyla? To know that Elizabeth had changed time to save the expedition, but in doing so had condemned the Athosians. ‘I should’ve checked in with you after old Elizabeth was found. Her messing with the timeline, changing our fate . . . we lived, but others died because we lived. Your people.’

The enormity of that made John sick and dizzy. The burden of bringing the wraith onto the Athosians by picking up the amulet, the horror of waking those in hibernation, John had lived with that for months now and it didn’t get any easier.

But knowing that it would have all been solved if he’d just stayed dead? That was a headfuck of gargantuan proportions.

‘I need you to know, Major . . . John, that I do not wish it had been different. I see hope here and have made friends I am glad of. But I admit, it was hard to hear Elizabeth’s story. It is hard to hold knowledge of the deaths of people I know, particularly you and Rodney.’

John suddenly winced as a stab of pain shot across his chest. It came on so quickly he didn’t know where it had originated. Maybe Teyla was going harder on him in their sparring than he realised, but surely she had reason? He pressed a hand to his sternum, massaging away the hurt.

‘John, are you okay?’

‘Yeah, Teyla, go on,’ John reassured her, his voice taut against the pain.

She readied herself and waited for John to recover, only striking when he was prepared.

‘I admit I am trying not to be curious about what your original fate would ultimately have meant for this galaxy,’ Teyla continued, ‘but I like to believe your absence would have shown itself to be a loss, in time, despite the problems your arrival brought us in the short term.’

And this was why he loved this woman so fucking much. Where there had been pain in his chest, warmth flooded in. ‘Teyla . . . I don’t know how you learned to be so damn generous in such a hostile galaxy.’

‘Perhaps it is a necessary survival skill here . . . my people seem to see things more . . . collectively . . . than yours do,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘We struggle to see the lives of other humans in competition with our own, the survival of one is the survival of all.’

‘Huh,’ John pondered this, realising that many other earth cultures thought as Teyla did. Maybe his own culture was the exception.

‘But we have gone off track from what I was asking you. Something is bothering you, John.’

‘I’m fine,’ John said dismissively and automatically, aware he didn’t want to think too deeply about Teyla’s question.

‘You are not.’ Teyla said firmly.

‘How’m I gonna keep him safe?’ John blurted out, surprising himself as much as Teyla. He had no idea this was behind what he had been feeling. Now he’d said the words, though, John knew there was something about finding out that Rodney had died hours after their arrival in Atlantis that he just could not shake. It didn’t matter that it was another timeline, nor did he care that he himself had died hours later (or 10,000 years earlier, depending how you viewed it). Rodney had sacrificed his life and gone down with the ship, and so soon after losing Luke, John couldn’t shift the ache this set up inside of him, nor could he fully make sense of it.

He sat down heavily on a bench as the realisation settled in him, weighing him down.

‘I do not know. But I know that it goes somewhat unacknowledged how Dr McKay is the most vital person here. How often we are in his hands, and how much unlocking the secrets of this place depends on him. I do not think it would be wise to say it out loud too frequently.’

‘No, but maybe we need to admit to ourselves. Maybe I need to admit it . . . how important he is.’ Saying that just made the rocks in John’s chest feel bigger.

‘His welfare is quite a responsibility, and perhaps his life is more at risk because of what is expected of him,’ Teyla acknowledged.

John felt nauseous, and light-headed and bereft. They were going to lose more people, and that in itself was hard to bear, but given Rodney’s key role here and his inclination to act the cowardly lion but step up to spectacular feats of bravery, John had to admit to himself that losing Rodney was more than possible. And despite the difficulties between the two of them, the thought of losing McKay made him feel sick to his core. 

‘Yes,’ John acknowledged. ‘That’s it exactly. McKay’s valuable and I’m thrown by how easily he sacrificed himself.’

He wasn’t about to say more – he couldn’t even  _ explain _ the more. How there was so much weird tension between him and McKay and yet the man still mattered far too much.


	3. Year Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: canon-typical violence, life threatening injury, biphobia, homophobia and transphobia, reminiscences of HIV pandemic and AIDS losses.

John was worn out. Not just from another near-death experience (hey! Why not get caught up in a coup, just for a change of pace, and nearly get nuked?), but from this whole damn year, which for him had been six months longer than for everyone else, with that particular period stuck in waiting-for-ascension land being the most stressful of all, trapped and grounded and missing his team like a phantom limb.

After that, knowing Rodney had responded magnificently to the sand falling so quickly through John’s hourglass had deepened the respect Doranda had momentarily shaken. Even that incident, in retrospect, looked different now – the pressure for Rodney to be spectacular and  _ always right _ was immense, John saw, and the man nearly always rose to it. John had lost people over far stupider things than Rodney losing Collins.

Now, John was fetching his friend from the lab, hoping to talk him into the new  _ Dr Who _ . It was pizza night in the mess and John had actual Canadian beer to tempt Rodney with. He was pretty sure they were good friends now, even though there was unspoken stuff between them John still couldn’t name.

‘Well this is completely gay,’ John heard a young man’s English accent from the labs ahead and winced. He’d noticed “that’s so gay” had recently become the insult of choice for the younger generation, and he’d already grown heartily sick of it. So much for progress.

‘Explain to me exactly what you mean by that,’ McKay’s voice was uncharacteristically low and calm, and honestly, that was way scarier than when he was shouting.

‘It’s duff, gone wrong, isn’t it?’ The man said.

‘Okay, so explain to me why you used the word  _ gay _ ?’ Rodney said, sounding dangerous. John had stopped in his tracks, wanting to hear how this scene ended.

‘It’s just a figure of speech, man,’ the English voice had grown whiny and uncertain.

‘Let me make sure I have this right, a figure of speech where “gay” is equivalent to “duff and gone wrong”?’

‘Er . . . yeah, but there’s no harm meant.’

‘Oh I see, because what could possibly be harmful in associating the word gay with all things negative?’

‘Come on, lighten up, it’s just banter.’

‘Right, banter. The old excuse that being cruel to minorities is okay if it’s just done for laughs. Well, not here it isn’t. Here, that’s called bullying, and if it ever happens again, it’ll earn you a ticket back to the Milky Way. Is that understood?’

There was a mumble in response.

‘And you might like to consider that the reason your results are so  _ duff _ is because you’re so slow-witted you missed off this variable in your calculations . . .’ John heard the staccato squeak of pen on whiteboard, which was oddly one of his favourite Rodney-sounds.

He turned away. Now really wasn’t the time for the gay friend to walk into the room and invite McKay for a cosy evening, just the two of them. The homophobic prick might get entirely the wrong idea about Rodney by his association with John. Still, it warmed John to hear that McKay had his back.

Later, he and Rodney were in Rodney’s quarters, on their third beer and arguing about whether this new show was really  _ Dr Who _ if the sets didn’t wobble and the monsters weren’t made out of bubble wrap.

‘I’m sorry, but to me, the Doctor will always be Tom Baker,’ Rodney insisted, and John smiled, because he was only disagreeing with Rodney because he liked bickering with the man. Deep down, he agreed – this new guy was going to take some getting used to, but the show was entertaining enough in its own way.

They lapsed into companionable silence.

‘Hey McKay, I just wanna say I heard you chewing out that kid for using “gay” as an insult and I’d like you to know I appreciate it,’ John said.

He nudged Rodney gently with his elbow, and felt the man stiffen.

Obviously flustered, Rodney said, ‘nobody deserves appreciation for doing the right thing, Colonel.’ He jumped up, the relaxed mood between them shattered. ‘I’m, er . . . going to make some coffee. Want some?’

John sighed. McKay was an odd duck and the puzzle of such contradictory information took more than his Mensa-ready brain to solve. Certainly the word “autistic” didn’t cover all the man’s reactions. 

‘Sure, Rodney, coffee would be nice.’

***

After all that crap with the Genii it was good to be on a milk run for a change. Baryl was an appealing society with a rudimentary grasp of steam power and an apparently strong dislike of wearing much clothing. What they did wear tended to come in cheerful colours that were unlike anything John had seen since coming to Pegasus. 

AR-1 were in negotiations with the Barylin people for trade of a root vegetable that could be dried and ground to make a passable coffee substitute, a fruit crop that was something like large yellow blueberries, and access to an Ancient ruin that on first pass of the cloaked puddlejumper looked moderately interesting and gave off ever so faint energy readings that made McKay somewhat pushy to gain access  _ (‘Can’t we just land and have a quick look, Colonel?’ ‘That would be a no, McKay.’ _ )

There was a quietness and surprising primness about the ten officials who met AR-1 in the biggest town, a few clicks to the North of the ruins. They were draped casually in long striped scarves, turquoise and purple, that seemed to symbolise something official. The scarves hid little to nothing and were their only garb. Poor McKay didn’t seem to know where to look, Teyla of course didn’t bat an eyelid, and Ronon looked particularly relaxed, probably because there was no way anyone was concealing a weapon. John was used to clothing-optional spaces and simply felt overdressed. He hoped their apparel didn’t offend. 

_ ‘Decent, shy and reserved’ _ were the words their contact who recommended these people used to describe them, and once John looked past his prejudices, he found that to be an accurate summation. With barely a word said, the team were taken to a chamber, circular and lined with padded benches, and served light refreshments of odd little seaweed-tasting wafers and a drink that was a lot like sherbet. John introduced the team, and looked at the group, expectantly, noticing that they were too broad a demographic cross-section for that to be chance – ranging from young to old, male to female, able to disabled, and so on. One of them clutched a baby to her breast.

‘We are caretakers,’ the ten officials said in perfect unison. From then, they talked individually, albeit somewhat interchangeably. Halfway through the meeting, the baby decided it had had quite enough, and its mother rang a bell. Another woman came in, wearing a yellow scarf, which she swapped with the mother’s. The mother left, and the new woman sat, instantly attentive.

‘So, we hope that we can offer you some assistance in medicine and technology,’ Teyla finished the words she had been saying before the swap happened, ‘in exchange for access to the ruins.’

‘Certainly,’ a young androgyne with deep brown skin responded, with the barest look to their colleagues. ‘We are happy to send a guide with you in the morning, if you would like to overnight here in town.’ 

Baryl had very short days and it was already dusk outside. The settlement was warmed by geothermal energy, meaning day or night it was a constant, cosy warmth. The team willingly agreed to an overnight stay and were shown to a plush guesthouse that was lined from floor to ceiling with silky fabrics in various shades of gold and green. The reception room’s floor was deep-piled with cushions in browns and oranges, like leaves on a forest floor. 

‘Huh,’ said McKay, ‘the buildings are as overdressed as the people are underdressed.’ Fortunately, their host didn’t hear him, as she had disappeared through a side door. John shot Rodney a warning look, which he responded to with those wide eyes that invariably disarmed John.

‘S’nice,’ Ronon said succinctly, running his hand through the silken drapes. The man was still lapping up any luxuries that came his way with a dream-like incredulity. John suspected this was why Ronon clung to ragged clothes. It was as if he wouldn’t let himself get too used to being back in civilisation.

‘Your meal, friends!’ Their host, Lonar, a tall, jovial woman with lean muscles and a square jaw, carried a huge metal tray with a ball-shaped leg on each corner. She bent down to place the tray in the midst of cushions on the floor, her scarf falling forward and revealing an impressive view of a broad, bare back and tight glutes. 

‘Please call me if you need anything else. I have allocated you the two rooms on this side. She indicated plush, padded and studded doors. ‘And now I must retire. Rest well!’

The four of them sat down to survey the laden tray. John knew what was before him was food, but he had no idea what to do with the bewildering array of separate ingredients before him.

‘Here,’ Ronon said with a smirk, ‘I trained in the service with someone from Baryl. Let me show you.’ He deftly assembled a variety of the ingredients into an intricate little leaf-wrapped parcel, and then lifted this to John’s lips. John frowned for a second, then shrugged, and took the morsel from Ronon’s fingers.

‘Oh my god!’ he moaned as the complex tastes exploded across his tongue. Ronon quickly created two more parcels, feeding them to Rodney and Teyla, and soon they too were sighing with pleasure. By this time, Rodney had caught on and assembled his own parcel.

‘Is . . . the feeding thing, is that part of the ritual?’ Rodney asked shyly. 

Ronon nodded. 

‘Oh, well, in that case . . .’ Rodney offered his lumpy parcel to Ronon’s mouth with a slight blush, and Ronon took it carefully with his lips, and then grinned as the flavours hit. John felt a stir of jealousy, but tamped it down.

The four of them lingered over the meal, becoming defter and more experimental with their parcels as time wore on. There was more food there than they could possibly eat, but they tried their damnedest. John soon noted that Rodney only made parcels for Teyla and Ronon, and found himself doing the same, while Teyla and Ronon alternated feeding him and McKay. 

They were just “filling up the corners” when Ronon refused John’s proffered parcel.

‘Should’ve said – the meal isn’t over til you’ve fed all your companions.’ 

Rodney pulled back the parcel he’d been about to feed to Teyla, and looked nervously across to John.

_ What the hell. _

John held the parcel up for his friend, and Rodney did the same for him, and they both, excruciatingly carefully, took the offered food into their mouths. But still the slight brush of Rodney’s strong fingers on John’s lower lip was enough to stir something up that John really didn’t want stirred.

After they were done, John didn’t think twice before bunking up with Ronon. Teyla had been (unnecessarily) protecting McKay’s virtue from John since year one, and John had long ago learned not to let himself be irked by it. 

*** 

Their young guide was called Jonil. He was a beanpole of a man, taller than Ronon and narrower than John, with deep brown skin and long, wavy hair. His knowledge of the ruins and their history was exhaustive to the point of nerdiness. Leaving Ronon on the surface guarding their way in and Teyla guarding the entrance at the lower level, Jonil took Rodney and John down into a small underground complex, which looked like an Ancient lab.

‘. . . then there was the excavation by Balika Jevan in 463, after that nobody bothered until Suma Cando invented the steam-powered excavator in 670, that was sixty-five years ago . . .’

‘God, doesn’t the man ever shut up?’ McKay whispered to John as they were led into the underground chamber Jonil believed would be most promising. John tried desperately to bite back a comment about pots and kettles and watched as Rodney went to work.

John liked to think he had parked his little crush on Rodney – if McKay was uncomfortable with him, the last thing he wanted to do was make it worse by being a creep – but there were moments like this when John allowed himself to watch and quietly appreciate the man. He loved it when Rodney was so full of enthusiasm and those damn, sturdy, competent hands were flitting over consoles like the virtuoso he might have been but for that asshole teacher who crushed his spirit when he was twelve.

Like, who expects any 12-year-old boy to be in touch with his feelings, let alone put them into his piano playing? Oh, John could register in that story another sign that Rodney might be autistic, might struggle with showing his feelings more than most, but either way, you just don’t break a young spirit like that, it was simply cruel.

Whoa – where had all that come from? Maybe John still thought a little more about McKay than he’d like to admit. He went back to contemplating the man in front of him as he worked.

Rodney was everything John was not – broad across the back where John was slender, effortlessly muscled where John’s arms had stayed like sticks for years despite intense working out. Even McKay’s hairline was more masculine than John’s, and John felt a twinge of jealousy sometimes that McKay was naturally built to be a soldier in ways John just wasn’t.

_ Well, there are more ways than one to be a man, _ he reminded himself sternly. It hadn’t been an easy fit in the Air Force for John, but he’d earned his right to be here and the respect of those under his command. Still, John was conscious of the ways he had to try very hard to live up to notions of manhood, while it seemed like masculinity came effortlessly to Rodney and in turn the other man really didn’t seem to care about conforming to it at all.

Maybe John had tried too hard to conform in his efforts to prove that a gay man could serve. He wondered what it would be like to be like McKay – bubble bath loving, nerdy, animated, not afraid to chatter or say how he feels . . . but maybe you had to be straight to get away with all that, John reflected.

‘Are you going to just stand there staring into space, or are you going to get over here and turn this on for me?’ Rodney’s voice was impatient, but his eyes held a question. John just smirked and sauntered over to the console, reaching out with his mind as well as his hand to feel for the interface.

Just then a chilling, cut off cry came from the entranceway above. Teyla’s voice, inarticulate, strangled, and all too quickly silenced. Moments later, John detected a faint tang in the air.

‘Gas!’

Trying to hold his breath, he grabbed for McKay’s arm, but it suddenly got much further away. He watched in horror as Rodney fell, wide eyed and panicked. Jonil was on his knees. John’s head felt like someone was stuffing it with sawdust, and then he toppled like a tree and his mind snuffed out.

*** 

They woke up in a narrow metal stockade with a heavy lock, groggy from whatever the hell that gas was. John’s head pounded like the time he’d drunk three quarters of a bottle of tequila at his eighteenth birthday party. He retched a little before taking enough deep breaths to calm his system.

There was a blue tint to the light here, and the gravity was springy. Perhaps even more conclusively, there was an enormous fucking planet looming in the daytime sky above their heads that hadn’t been there back on Baryl. 

So, nobody was coming to get them.  _ Great _ .

They were in the middle of a rocky desert, the stargate just visible in the distance, beyond an outcrop. The planet had “uninhabited” written all over it.

No sign of Jonil, and their oversized, muscled guards were too overdressed to be Barylin. John didn’t think the Barylin were the kinds of folks to screw them over. He hoped Jonil was okay, but would they have left someone behind to raise the alarm? He felt a wince of concern for the chatty young man, but then brought his focus onto his team. All present, Teyla and Rodney looking as groggy as John felt, Ronon looking more alert. He met the younger man’s eyes – how the hell had they got past the most vigilant man in the galaxy?

‘Sleep dart,’ Ronon growled his answer to the unspoken question, rubbing at a spot on his neck. 

‘Fuck,’ McKay moaned next to John, holding his head. Come to think of it, McKay looked like he was doing worse than John and Teyla. 

_ Crap _ , his hypoglycemia. John fished around in his pockets, found a battered power bar, and made Rodney eat it, one crumb at a time. Slowly he saw the glazed look leave the man’s eyes as he started to be more aware of his surroundings.

‘Oh. We’re screwed, huh?’ Rodney said, his blue eyes locking on John’s hazels. He was leaning heavily against John and didn’t seem inclined to pull away. John was grateful for the comforting weight against his body.

‘Aren’t we always?’ John said lightly, ignoring the churning in his gut.

They settled back to recover their strength, John watching their six guards surreptitiously through half-closed eyes. They were dressed in generic browns, no sign of a particular affiliation or culture, perhaps mercenaries for hire. They were armed only with long knives. John reckoned with Teyla and Ronon on their side, it would be possible to take them if they could just get out of the cage. But they needed to be sharper than they were now.

He sat back to rest, and breathe, and monitor the return of his strength. Slowly the nausea left him, and Rodney seemed a little more with-it by his side. Time to gather intel. He pulled himself to his feet and stretched out his seized-up muscles.

‘Hey, since we’re obviously meant to be delivered alive, what say you give us some water?’ John said to the guard who was circling the cage.

She looked him up and down and glowered, but still handed John her canteen, taking care to stay out of reach of any efforts to grab her.

‘You know,’ John said, after handing the water straight to Rodney, who took a glug and passed it round, ‘whatever the Genii are paying you, we can double it.’ It was worth a guess, after all, even if since the coup they were supposed to be allies (again).

The guard just laughed, ‘the ones I serve don’t care about your human squabbles, and you can offer nothing that could waver my loyalty,’ she responded.

_ Fuck.  _ Wraith worshippers. John looked over them for signs of wraith tech, but it was mercifully absent – wraith tended not to hand out their weapons to humans. No stunners. That was a point in their favour. And they weren’t in a hive, meaning these goons were free range and probably hadn’t made contact with their masters yet.

‘Lemme guess, you were there to check out the outpost. We were just a lucky break for you.’

She didn’t reply, but her eyes acknowledged the truth of his words.

‘My canteen,’ she said coldly, reaching out. Teyla passed it back to John, and he drank half of what was there, giving Rodney the rest, and then handed it back to the guard, who walked away with disdain, turning her back and going to chat to her equally oblivious friends.

‘Miss you already!’ John called after her, making sure the six of them were uninterested in their prisoners.

_ Right. _ If they couldn’t escape, they were as good as dead, so four against six would be worth the risk. If they could just figure out how to get out of the cage . . .

He heard a quiet  _ snick _ behind him and turned to discover Ronon picking the lock with one of his concealed blades. He passed out three more blades quietly, and John grinned.

_ Way to go, Ronon! _

They whispered a hasty plan, and then exited the cage quietly. Within moments, though, the guards had spotted their escape and came at them as a group. AR-1 got in formation, back to back, with McKay protected in the centre, fending off the guards more with their kicks than with their shorter knives.

Teyla brought down one of them quickest, and Ronon soon followed suit. He caught a gash across his kicking leg for his pains, but he rallied and engaged guard number two. John kept checking on all of them, and Rodney in the middle, while he took on a burly guy with a pretty face and an ugly sneer.

The wraith worshippers just didn’t have the training – they should have easily overpowered AR-1 with their wraith-enzyme boosted strength and superior weapons, but they had no ready response to the tactics they were up against. John thanked god for nearly 2 years of extra hand-to-hand training with Teyla and Ronon. This brute was proving a challenge, but John was pretty sure he would take him down eventually, and the man’s lumbering knife strikes were too slow to catch John.

The hardest thing was staying in formation, but the team were fiercely protective of Rodney. Not that Rodney’s hand-to-hand skills weren’t improving after nearly 2 years in the field, but he was no match for the rest of them, and, more crucially, he was far too valuable to the expedition to lose in a knife fight.

Finally, John had his man. A clumsy lunge jabbing into his leg with the long knife got turned to John’s advantage, and John used the momentum to sidestep, grab hold of the man’s arm, and pull him onto John’s own knife. There was a silent, surprised expression on the man’s face as the life drained quickly out of him.

Just at that moment, John heard a soft ‘oh’ from right behind him. His heart seized at the quiet, terrifying sound. He turned to find McKay in the embrace of one of the guards, the wraith worshipper’s long knife deep in Rodney’s torso. 

The world narrowed, and John knew only a wild vortex of fear and fury, shouting out his rage and falling on the wraith worshipper, pulling him off Rodney and cutting his throat.

Teyla and Ronon had the final two guards at bay, so John could focus on Rodney, who was sinking to his knees, with a surprised look on his face. The knife had come out when John pulled his assailant off him, and the wound in his side was spilling way too much blood. 

John had never felt so terrified in his life. He wasn’t used to feeling terror in battle – the last time he’d felt anything like this was when he dragged the body of his dying lover, Lyle Holland, across the desert in Afghanistan.

John caught McKay as he began to keel over, and lowered him onto his back, reaching to gently ease up the man’s T-shirt so he could see the wound. Mckay fought John’s hands away with surprising vigour for someone bleeding as hard as he was.

‘Fuckssake McKay, I’m trying to save your life, not cop a feel,’ John felt the usual flash of confused anger at Rodney’s reactions to him. McKay was consistently averse to letting John see his skin – even now, even when he might die without help.

Rodney looked increasingly out of it, but still resisted John’s efforts to lift his shirt. In the end, John just took his blade to it, cutting a slit right up the left side, next to the wound. Rodney was still holding his right hand tight over his chest. 

John had no time to think about it. He unwrapped a field dressing, way more familiar with them than he’d like to be, and applied pressure to the steadily bleeding wound. It was ugly and even with pressure it would not stop oozing. John pointlessly ran through his head the various ways in which this wound could be fatal. McKay was unnaturally quiet and getting paler by the second. John wished he was fussing and bitching, or even screaming – anything but this.

He looked up, and Ronon was already in the middle distance, running for the gate that could be seen on the edge of sight. Teyla was binding the only guard remaining alive, her furious face set as she put a knee in the woman’s back and tightly roped her wrists. 

John turned his attention back to McKay, whose head was now lolling to one side, his pallor grey. 

‘Stay with me, Rodney,’ John said, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice.

_ I can’t lose you. _

John looked up again, to see Ronon was at the gate. It would be a slow process, dialing Atlantis so they would know this address, then dialing the alpha site so he could go through without an IDC or a radio. It would be what, twenty minutes before a jumper was scrambled bringing Carson to them. All John could do in the meantime was apply pressure and watch the blood seep through his fingers. He really wasn’t sure Rodney would make it. Exchanging a worried glance with Teyla, he saw that clearly she was thinking the same.

‘Hang in there, buddy,’ John said, trying to ignore the rocks in his gut. dammit, McKay  _ mattered _ to him. More than anyone had in a while. He thought about Holland, Luke, even Ray and yeah, Rodney meant that much to him and more, though their relationship wasn’t like that. 

‘John?’ Rodney murmured after a while.

‘I’m here,’ John replied, wishing he could hold the other man’s hand or stroke his face, but both hands were needed to keep him from bleeding out.

‘You think I’m a homophobe.’ Rodney said weakly, fuzzy, indignant realisation dawning across his face.

John didn’t want to answer that – if Rodney died, he desperately didn’t want this to be the last thing they ever said to each other.

‘How long, John?’ McKay’s fading voice was nevertheless insistent.

John might not want this conversation, but he owed a dying man the truth. ‘Since the first mission. Since you wouldn’t shower with me.’

Rodney grimaced, a mixture of pain and indignation.

‘Oh Sheppard, for a smart man you are so incredibly fucking stupid.’ And then he passed out.

‘Rodney!’ John checked his pulse, and it was thready. ‘Dammit Rodney, stay with me, buddy,’ John spoke past the knot in his throat. 

Teyla sank down next to him and one arm around John’s shoulders, the other hand pressed to Rodney’s face.

‘I can’t lose him too, Teyla,’ John said, recognizing what a huge admission this was, how despite all attempts to keep Rodney at arms’ length, the man had wedged himself firmly in John’s heart.

‘What can I do to help?’ Teyla asked.

‘Put pressure on his wound. I need to get things cleaned up, make sure there’s nothing I’m missing.’ Teyla slid her hands over John’s and replaced them, pressing on Rodney’s wound, and John set about cleaning up as much as he could. He went to push McKay’s torn T-shirt out of the way.

‘John.’ Teyla’s voice was quiet but urgent. ‘Rodney is very shy and self-conscious about his body. We should respect his privacy. We do not need to know why.’

‘Okay.’ If Rodney was shy about something John had no business prying. He continued to clean round the seeping wound, quickly realizing his efforts were futile. He bagged the ugly weapon, jagged and filthy, that had created the injury. There was little else he could do. 

He slid his hands over Teyla’s. There was nothing to do but wait and keep up the constant pressure halting the blood loss from Rodney’s wound. It seemed interminable, but in reality it was maybe 15 minutes after Ronon dialed the gate that a cloaked jumper landed close by them and they were brought quickly on board. Carson worked on McKay, and John tried to fight off a nurse so he could keep an eye on his friend.

‘Colonel, you’re wounded,’ the man said. John looked down, and sure enough, an ugly wound in his leg was dripping blood onto the deck. He’d been so full of adrenaline he hadn’t noticed. ‘Oh,’ he said, feeling suddenly lightheaded, and he sank down onto the bench before passing out.

*** 

John woke up in the infirmary and looked around him. The bed where he’d expect to see McKay from all their previous joint sojourns was empty, and John’s heart stuttered in his chest.

‘Colonel, you’re awake early,’ the nurse from before said as he came and checked on John. John could remember the guy’s name now – Cortez. ‘We had to give you an anesthetic – Dr Biro performed minor surgery on your leg, but you’ll be up and running in a fortnight or so.’

‘McKay?’ he asked anxiously.

‘In surgery. That wound wasn’t pretty.’

John noted the lack of reassurance. Rodney was alive, but not out of the woods. More waiting. His stomach churned, and he wasn’t sure if it was post-anesthetic nausea or something else. 

Teyla and Ronon appeared at the door, coming sombrely to his bedside. Ronon was limping slightly on his own bandaged leg.

‘I didn’t protect him,’ John said to them dejectedly, and they just pressed their hands against him and didn’t speak.

An hour later, a tired-looking Carson came into the room.

‘We fixed him up, lad. He won’t be awake for a while, but barring unforeseen complications, I think he’ll pull through.’

John saw Ronon turn away and surreptitiously wipe tears away at the news, and it made him feel better about the moisture in his own eyes.

***

‘Barring unforeseen complications,’ Carson had said, and John could honestly curse the man. Rodney was now recovering from his third surgery in a week, and the raging infection from a blade that had, according to Beckett, ‘more bacteria than the average sewer.’ John sat by McKay’s bedside, watching him sleep off the latest anesthetic and continued to fret more than he was used to fretting when a man was down.

Rodney’s face was drawn and grey and stubbled and still oddly beautiful. 

‘You again,’ Rodney said with mock grumpiness when he finally came to.

‘Me again,’ John replied, with a too-soft smile.

‘God, what did that Scottish cauldron-brewer do to me this time? I feel like shit.’

‘I’ll leave him to give you all the gory details,’ John said, ‘I just know it went well, finally,’ he couldn’t disguise the relief in his voice.

‘It’s been bad, hasn’t it?’ Rodney said, his look intent. ‘I remember fever, and pain, and vomiting, and then it all goes a bit fuzzy . . .’

‘Yeah, Rodney, we nearly lost you,’ John’s voice definitely didn’t choke a little saying that.

Rodney didn’t seem to know what to say to that and went quiet for a bit. Then he scrubbed at his face, ‘God, how long has it been? I can’t stand this much facial hair.’

‘Five days since we brought you in. Want me to get your shave kit?’ He knew McKay couldn’t bear to let his stubble grow and had gone to extraordinary lengths at times to get a shave off-world. ‘I’ll have to check it’s ok with Carson.’

‘What’s okay with me?’ Carson said, coming over to Rodney’s bedside and checking on his patient.

‘I want to shave,’ Rodney said, and his eyes were pleading. John didn’t get why it bothered him so much, but it did. He’d be a ball of tension now til the facial hair was gone. John put the observation discreetly into his  _ McKay: possible autism _ file.

‘Out of the question! You’ve had abdominal surgery, there’s to be no reaching up like that for at least four weeks.’

‘Four weeks! Carson, I can’t go that long!’ Okay, Rodney was really winding himself up now.

‘I can see if one of the nurses will do it, they’re all pretty handy with a razor, but they’re also all very busy.’

‘I could do it,’ John volunteered, without even thinking about it.

Rodney’s eyes widened in surprise.

‘You could? Really? Erm . . . yes, thank you . . . I mean if you’re sure.’

‘There ye go, then,’ Carson said, patting Rodney on the arm. ‘Now, don’t be too hard on the man while he holds a blade to yer throat, Rodney.’

Carson finished his checks and slipped back out.

‘You’d really do this?’ Rodney said.

‘Sure. Happy to,’ said John, gulping past the sudden tightness in his throat.

John didn’t understand why the movies made shaving another person look sexy – it was absolutely nerve-wracking, especially when that other person was as liable to complain as Rodney McKay.

That first year, many of the expedition had learned to shave with an open blade, and most hadn’t gone back – there were better things to do with the personal stowage allowance on the  _ Daedalus _ than fill it with disposables. So, the blade John was gently gliding through the foam on McKay’s chin was a naked one.

And okay, there was something intimate about this, the scratch of McKay’s healthy crop of stubble, the smell of the foam, the slightly stuttering breath across the back of John’s hand. McKay was unnaturally still and quiet beneath John’s hands. No doubt the stillness was mostly due to the proximity of the blade, but John could detect something else – something he once would have assumed was homophobia, but still looked a lot like fear.

‘I’m not going to cut you, Rodney,’ he said, though he’d no idea why – he knew it wasn’t that, but dammit, what was it?’

‘I know,’ Rodney breathed, and John pulled his hand away, ‘I trust you,’ Rodney added, his blue eyes meeting John’s.

Okay, now that was curious. The look in McKay’s eyes was open, honest, but then it faltered, and John knew part of Rodney was lying. Part of Rodney didn’t trust John, was afraid of him, or at least uncertain.

He went back to shaving the other man, feeling thoughtful. He couldn’t make this puzzle add up, but he did know he’d go a long way to win Rodney’s trust. 

‘There,’ he said, wiping the last of the foam from Rodney’s face and resisting the urge to caress the man’s smooth skin. ‘Good as new.’ 

McKay smiled up at John, a genuine, open look. ‘You have no idea what that meant to me, Colonel. Thank you.’

‘I wish you’d call me John, Rodney.’

‘Thank you, John.’ Rodney’s smile after days of worrying about losing him just about undid John.

*** 

‘Carson and Kate both insist that AR-1 needs some proper R&R and time for Rodney to convalesce,’ Elizabeth had said to John a couple of weeks after the attack. ‘I’m sorry, John, but I’m ordering you out of Atlantis for a month, because none of you seem able to avoid getting sucked back into work.’

Which is how the team found themselves pitching a little tent-and-puddlejumper camp at the edge of a delightful little beach on Rexa, where John finally taught Teyla and Ronon how to surf using very near approximation to Earth longboards they’d found on a planet called Jeyr-Al, while Rodney sat in the shade of an awning, bereft of his laptop, filling notebook after notebook with theories and formulas.

They’d tried to stop him, but Rodney was a runaway train when he had his geek on.

‘It’s relaxing, trust me – all theoretical stuff, no “how am I going to stop my friends and colleagues from dying horribly” stuff,’ he insisted. The comment landed painfully in John. He wasn’t over nearly losing Rodney, but he recognized Rodney’s own burden was so much greater.

Occasionally, John would see him perusing physics journals, but this would generally lead to McKay rocking with laughter or throwing them across the beach in fury (he always retrieved them, though). John wondered what it must be like to mentally scream at an entire discipline that was missing most of the information Rodney now knew. Beyond frustrating, he imagined.

By the end of the second long Rexa day Rodney was up and about enough to paddle and take short walks on the beach. 

As the sun crawled lazily toward the horizon to their right, John looked to the shore to see Rodney gazing wistfully out to sea, sitting on the sand near the water’s edge in a baggy pair of cargo shorts and a loose T-shirt. John realized with a twinge of guilt they’d been neglecting their team-mate. The waves were perfect in this late afternoon of the week-long Rexa day, and Ronon and Teyla had now mastered the craft of catching them. They’d spent hours waiting in the line-up through the long lulls between sets. It was better meditation than sitting cross-legged on a wooden floor listening to other people breathe. 

The landscape was spectacular, a broad swathe of beach merged into immense, labyrinthine dunes, behind which the distant mountains showed their snowy peaks and snaking glaciers. The shadows were long and the light was golden and mellow.

Ronon and Teyla were still eager but John had noodle-arms, so he rode his board all the way in and pulled it out of the surf, dropping down next to Rodney, who sat quiet beside him. The higher gravity suddenly made its presence felt out of the salt-dense water, and John considered never moving again. He felt languid and sated.

‘Sorry, Rodney, we’ve been out for hours,’ he said to his friend. ‘Got so caught up out there.’

‘Hmm? Oh, no, it’s fine. Just look for a while – see what I’ve been seeing,’ Rodney said, a calm smile on his face.

John looked out to sea and waited patiently for the next set. Teyla and Ronon were way out, just waiting quietly for the perfect wave. Teyla went first, the diligent student, doing everything John had taught her with her usual grace. She had on an Athosian laced crop-top and a pair of loose Earther shorts. Her lithe, muscled body was in perfect control as she snaked her way to shore, letting herself be just a little fancy in how she rode her board. 

Ronon followed, perhaps a little less graceful, but no less in control, his strong body directing the board along the next wave, springing up onto his powerful legs, muscles rippling beneath his threadbare cutoffs.

‘Did you ever see anything so beautiful?’ Rodney’s gaze was pure and joyful, not objectifying, and John found himself watching McKay’s face as McKay was transfixed by the artfulness of his team.

‘Beautiful, yeah,’ he acknowledged, although he couldn’t quite decide which view he liked more, the watcher or the watched.

‘Now imagine equal beauty doubled with your effortless skill and you’ll understand why I’ve been sitting here for hours getting nothing done,’ Rodney said, his face serene. John felt a wave of heat course through him at the thought of Rodney watching him with such appreciation, let alone holding him up there with Teyla and Ronon. He couldn’t help blushing – he hoped the heat he felt in his ear-tips would be hidden by sunburn.

They sat and watched in silence together until finally the other two tired and came in, their faces beaming. John felt so much joy to know he’d helped put those smiles there – sharing his love of surfing meant so much to him.

As the sun finally began to creep below the horizon, a large group of Rexars came down to the beach and lit a fire. They laid their straw mats on the ground and piled on baskets of food. The team threw in Earther food – peanuts, chocolate and cookies, and they all settled in for a feast.

John watched Rodney, who was finally looking himself again, pink from the sun but bright-eyed, content and able to move more freely without his wound restricting him. Kal gravitated to him, just like she always did. 

‘Rodney,’ her eyes sparkled in the growing firelight. ‘It’s a relief to see you looking so well.’ Her words precisely echoed John’s feelings.

‘Thanks, I . . .’ he fell silent. John had noticed he couldn’t speak about what happened yet. There was going to be a lot of time with Heightmeyer in Rodney’s future.

Kal had placed herself next to Rodney and she leaned towards him, squeezing his arm comfortingly and saying nothing. Rodney leaned into her touch. 

_ Oh, _ John thought. Maybe Luke had been right after all. He felt a stab of old grief as he thought this, and then a stab of something else that was harder to name as he watched the easy closeness between these two. With his assumption of Rodney’s queerphobia now in question, he was more able to see how Rodney responded to Kal for what it was.

‘I have news,’ Kal said eventually. ‘From Baryl. About how wraith worshippers came there undetected.’ She watched Rodney carefully as she said this, and John could see she was deliberately making Rodney go back toward the subject. Rodney’s reaction was surprising, though – he tensed at first, but then visibly relaxed, as if knowing he could trust Kal. 

‘I might have known you’d succeed where we failed,’ John said. The Barylin had been mortified about what had happened to AR-1 but had then done a classic ostrich-act when it came to investigating, becoming awkward, bureaucratic and uncooperative. A typical shame response, but not a helpful one. But Kal and her people had a way with them when it came to building relationships and gathering intel.

‘Actually it was Jonil who helped the most, he has taken things most personally,’ Kal went on.

John had been relieved to find out that their guide had survived – he doubted it was out of mercy, but he was grateful for the wraith worshippers’ incompetence.

‘There had been a shipment of cal-yi nuts from Tensecca the day before you arrived. They had gone into storage, but Jonil took the initiative to check through all incoming goods, and sure enough, there were six empty barrels in the store. The Barylin are now in tense discussion with the Tenseccans. They may have been inclined to keep this to themselves until they had a clear resolution, as is their way, but we have informed your people of the news.’

‘Thanks,’ Rodney said to her, his face a little tight. ‘I . . . it’s good to know we weren’t betrayed by the Barylin.’ 

John noticed Rodney’s eyes getting moist, and the man quickly got up, heading down to the water. Kal followed, catching up to Rodney and taking his hand gently. John felt an odd mixture of warmth and jealousy, but he let it be.

*** 

‘So, want to catch the rest of Dr Who when I get back from Rexa?’ Rodney asked John over breakfast some weeks later. They were both picking at slimy reconstituted eggs. It had looked better than the grey oatmeal, but now John wasn’t so sure.

John was happy to see McKay’s bounce coming back, even if it came with a side order of shouting-at-minions and being generally abrasive. Rodney was his old self, was even managing back the field, although they’d taken things slowly on that front and sent Major Lorne’s team on the more unpredictable missions. John knew Rodney still had nightmares (and how happy was he that Rodney now trusted him enough to tell him stuff like that), but he was dealing, he was going to be okay. For all McKay seemed fragile sometimes, there was a surprising strength to the man.

‘Sure, I’d like that, it’s just getting good.’ He and Rodney had watched three episodes back-to-back on their last opportunity for downtime, and John grudgingly had to admit he was being won over.

‘It is, isn’t it? I like Jack Harkness, apparently he’s coming back.’ Interesting, that Rodney singled out the queer character. ‘Okay, I’ll be back from Rexa around six – swing by after that?’

‘Sure. I’ll bring dinner. Say hi to Kal for me, by the way,’ John said, checking his voice for bitterness. He was pretty sure the pleased-for bit of him was winning out over the jealous part. Mostly, he was grateful at the way he and Rodney had grown closer lately. Now he no longer wrongly assumed the other man was a homophobe. It was a relief to know his abiding impulse to like and trust McKay didn’t need to be tempered with caution.

‘Oh, if I see her, I will,’ McKay said casually.

‘I thought you were spending your day off with her,’ John was confused now.

‘No, Colonel, I’m spending my day off getting my back cracked by that genius I found while the rest of you were being beach bums.’

‘But . . . okay, maybe I got this wrong, but I thought you and Kal were dating.’

‘Wow. Seriously, wow.’ Rodney rolled his eyes dramatically. ‘You are honestly the slowest person in this whole expedition! How the hell did you miss how she and I were dating for ages, dramatically broke up well over half an Earth year ago, didn’t speak for ages, and are now just good friends?’

Oh. It looked like John had been missing a lot. And he felt he still was missing so many pieces of this puzzle. Just when he felt like he was on solid ground with Rodney, he realised yet again he was off balance.

‘So, um. Does that mean . . .’ John really didn’t know how to phrase his next question.

‘Spit it out, Colonel.’

‘Are you . . . not straight, then?’ Even as he said this, he could hear the wrongness in the question, and winced inwardly. 

Rodney’s eyes narrowed perilously. ‘Oh for pity’s sake, spare us from the conservatism of cis monosexual gay men! Let me be perfectly clear, Colonel. I’m not straight. I haven’t ever been straight or ever thought I was. I’ve been dating boys, girls and people in between and identifying as bi since I was thirteen years old. But a man dating a trans woman? That’s as straight as a man dating any woman is straight, and I’d really, really appreciate it if you dragged your GLBT awareness out of the dark ages and not invalidate my very good friend’s identity by calling me queer for dating her.’ As he spoke, Rodney’s voice rose in decibel, and began to shake. God, he was really pissed.

‘I  _ am _ queer, but I’m not queer for dating Kal, who is a woman. Are we fucking clear?’

Without waiting for a response, Rodney grabbed his tray, upsetting his apple juice, and moved to another table, slamming the tray down again. He looked like he was going to explode or even cry.

_ Fuck _ . How the hell did it turn out that  _ John _ was the queerphobic dickhead in this friendship? 

*** 

There were certain unwritten rules of Atlantis life, and one of those rules was that AR-1 always ate an early dinner together before movie night. So when McKay didn’t show up, John was unsurprised but miserable. He’d really fucked up, and it didn’t matter that ever since their spat John had been trying to update his thinking and reflect on his biases, the damage had been done.

For two years Rodney hadn’t come out to John, and when he finally did, it was in response to John being a narrow-minded asshole. He knew  _ exactly _ how he’d feel about that, and just how much damage it was going to do their friendship.

‘Have you talked to Rodney?’ Teyla asked, clearly trying to school the disapproval from her voice.

‘I’m working up to it. I promise.’ John knew how weak that sounded and sighed to himself.

‘I don’t really get what’s going on,’ Ronon said, frowning at John with clear impatience. ‘You’ve met Kal, talked to her, know she’s a woman, but Rodney tells me you can’t fully get that into your head.’

‘It’s complicated,’ John said, irritated to hear the whine in his own voice. Even he didn’t really believe himself when he said that.

‘Doesn’t seem complicated to me.’

Well, Ronon had a point. Why on earth did John need to frame his language to make Kal into something that didn’t fit her? He recognized it had been a choice, and a bad one.

‘I don’t think it was really about Kal. I do think of her as a woman, I just got caught up in something I was sensing about Rodney. I had a vibe that he might be bisexual.’ John noted the confused looks in his friends’ faces. ‘Into men as well as women, I mean.’

Ronon and Teyla looked at John with open puzzlement that clarification in no way diminished.

‘Oh god, he’s not out to you.’ John’s heart began to pound as he realized he was screwing up  _ again. ‘ _ I thought I was the last to know. Listen, forget I said anything. Don’t tell Rodney I told you, please?’

‘Sheppard, you’re not making any sense.’ Ronon sounded frustrated, and perhaps a little bemused, but his voice was almost condescending. ‘You earthers are weird about sex. Why  _ wouldn’t _ Rodney be into all genders?’

John frowned, trying to process what Ronon said. He looked at Teyla for help. She had on her most patient expression, and by that alone John knew she was infuriated with him. He felt like he was drowning in subtext.

‘We don’t want you to think that we’d judge you for only liking men,’ Teyla said, looking firmly at Ronon, ‘but surely you recognize most people aren’t that way?’

John felt suddenly shaky – despite her words, this felt a lot like judgement. He’d thought Teyla was cool with him being gay.

‘Most people are straight, yeah – but I don’t understand what your point is?’ Now John was getting frustrated and this whole conversation felt like a house of straw.

‘What’s straight mean?’ Ronon asked.  _ God, _ were Earthers that bad about talking through this stuff that after nearly a year Ronon didn’t know?

‘Men who are only into women, women who are only into men. You know, how most people are – how you guys are.’ But as he said that, John realized it was a complete assumption on his part.

‘Er, no. That’s not how most people are,’ Ronon said. ‘That’s just weird.’

‘Ronon!’ Teyla said sharply. ‘There’s nothing wrong with only liking one gender.’

‘No! Course not,’ Ronon corrected himself, but he looked somewhat doubtful.

‘But John,’ Teyla turned her calm brown eyes on him, ‘I cannot quite believe when we are the same species that among Earthers being – bisexual, you called it? – is rare when in Pegasus it is very unusual not to be.’

John fell silent, contemplating what Teyla had said. He’d heard of research that said most people were bisexual naturally, but he’d never quite believed it. There wasn’t a bisexual bone in his body, women genuinely did nothing for him. It never occurred to him that not being bisexual made him the exception. Despite all the research, he’d been conditioned to believe you were straight or gay and nothing in between. 

And then something else dawned on him, the natural conclusion of what they were telling him.

‘You mean you’re both . . .’

‘Of course, John,’ Teyla spoke to him a little like she was speaking to someone very young or very slow. ‘I personally have not met many people who are not.’

Ronon just shrugged. ‘Earth attitudes are strange. How would you even know that if you haven’t met everyone yet?’ 

*** 

John chimed at Rodney’s door, his heart in his mouth. When Rodney opened it, he didn’t look pleased to see John – the left side of his mouth was sloping downward even more than usual.

‘Peace offering,’ John said, handing over the coffee and chocolate he’d called in all his favours to get as one might offer food to a vicious animal.

‘I don’t want bribes, I want you to catch a clue,’ Rodney snapped. But he took the goodies even so.

‘I know, Rodney,’ John said, running his hand down the back of his neck. ‘Look, can we talk, please?’

‘I’m listening.’ Rodney wasn’t going to offer John a chair, so John stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor and gathered his thoughts into words. It took a while, and Rodney began to tap his foot to fill the awkward silence.

‘Okay, so . . . like you, I’ve been out since forever. But . . . the scene I was in, I can see now how it made bi and trans people invisible. And lesbians? They were just an afterthought. The trans women in that scene, they were sometimes sleeping with what we thought of as gay guys, and I suppose I saw them as an extension of gay, not their real identity. And we used to have a saying, “bi now, gay later” . . .’ 

‘Yes, I’m familiar with the phrase,’ Rodney said bitterly, ‘I’m still waiting to outgrow my bi phase and be a proper monosexual gay.’ His voice dripped with sarcasm.

‘I know it’s shit. I hadn’t had to think about that stuff for a long time. Haven’t been able to be part of a community, really. My only defence is that before the Air Force I was preoccupied by HIV and after, well, HIV  _ and _ the bullshit Uniform Code. It’s not an excuse, but I didn’t look up out of my own silo to realise how we were marginalising our own people. I’m going to do better and I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not like HIV didn’t hit the bi and trans community, you know,’ Rodney said impatiently. ‘Bi people were especially stigmatised, seen as promiscuous and unsafe and likely to spread the disease between groups. Well, I’m not promiscuous or greedy, I’m picky as fuck and have dated maybe 10 people my whole life and not slept with all of those. I just don’t have a gender preference – I’m as close to pansexual as you can get.’

‘Yeah, I heard people say that bullshit. About being greedy, I mean. I never thought it myself – I don’t think I fully  _ got _ bi people though.’

‘What’s to get? I never understand what people don’t understand, unless it’s some sort of “I only sleep with men because I have to, if I could bear to sleep with women that’s what I’d do”.’

John ducked his head. That was exactly it.

‘Oh my god, do you realise how utterly homophobic that is? Seeing men sleeping with men as the less good option that should only happen if it absolutely has to? And what, if you fall for a guy you’re supposed to just overlook your own feelings and find yourself a nice girl? It’s so ridiculous.’

When Rodney said it like that, it did sound ridiculous.

‘As for what you said about trans women sleeping with gay guys, that’s just the icing on the cake, isn’t it, men sleeping with women and not prepared to admit they’re more bi than they realised. People in the community not willing to see bisexuality when it’s right in front of them. And don’t pretend to me trans women don’t get seen as or treated exactly like men treat all women. Expected to be submissive, objectified and sexualised, given the caretaking roles, etc etc. And who was looking out for  _ them _ during the height of AIDS? They were the worst hit group of all.’

‘I know, Rodney. I’ve been doing my reading. I just wasn’t in a place where I ever got to have these conversations, and I’m sorry for that. I was caught up in my own troubles.’

Rodney looked like he was going to snap back at that, but then he sagged a little.

‘Did you lose anyone close? From AIDS, I mean.’ Rodney’s face softened. ‘I was lucky, I realise, looking back.’

God, why did Rodney have to ask  _ that _ question? It had been a long time since John talked about this.

‘I . . . yes.’ Realising this was a cop-out, John added, ‘the two most important people in my life back then . . . Love of my life. Best friend . . . both gone in a year.’ To this day he could feel his throat closing up when he thought of Ray and Will.

‘Oh god . . . John, I’m sorry.’ Rodney’s eyes were suddenly full of care and it only made the pain worse.

John tried to shrug it off. ‘Long time ago,’ he said. He hoped Rodney didn’t notice the hoarseness in his voice.

‘Still, must’ve been devastating. I can understand how you didn’t notice what else was going on.’ Rodney’s anger was finally softening, and John began to think maybe they could fix this. The relief did nothing to lessen the tide of emotions he was feeling.

‘It wasn’t an excuse then to crap on parts of the community,’ he acknowledged. ‘Certainly isn’t an excuse now. All the things that were right in front of me and I didn’t see. All the transphobic, biphobic things I heard every day and didn’t challenge. Hell, I didn’t even know it was trans people who kicked off the Stonewall riots, or a bi woman who started Pride to commemorate that. We owe our rights to people we mistreat or ignore.’

‘Well . . .’ Rodney frowned for a moment, his face looking torn. ‘Just . . . can you accept it may take a while for me to get the trust back here?’

And suddenly one of the big puzzle pieces fell into place.

‘You didn’t trust me from the moment you found out I was gay,’ John said, certain of his revelation. ‘You assumed I wouldn’t accept you. That  _ I _ would be phobic.’ 

Rodney nodded, his broad shoulders sagging. ‘I wish you could understand the amount of rejection there is from both sides, gay and straight people, John. I’m sorry I assumed you’d be unaccepting, but it tends to be a safer option.’

‘I didn’t help any by assuming your mistrust of me was down to homophobia,’ John admitted.

‘I’m sorry.’ Rodney sagged a bit at that, sounding sincere. 

‘Imagine if we’d actually talked two years ago!’ John laughed without much humour. ‘I should’ve checked it out. I’m a dick for that, too.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Rodney said, finally smiling. ‘But I guess . . . I’m trying to imagine the stress – of being gay in the military. Of being as out as you manage to be. I think you’re very brave. Probably braver for that than for the other ridiculous things like riding nukes into hive ships. I mean, I’m a civilian and I struggle to be out as bi to many people. I don’t want to hide, but I like privacy.’

‘You were out to Luke,’ John suddenly realised. Rodney nodded, affirming. ‘And you don’t owe anyone your life story.’

‘Maybe,’ Rodney looked thoughtful, and something else John couldn’t name passed across his friend’s face. ‘Anyway, I think I can understand how you’d have some big defences. Maybe I have some of my own that don’t need to be  _ quite _ so high.’

‘I dunno, I think I proved your point, didn’t I?’ John said and Rodney just see-sawed his hand with a smirk. ‘But thanks,’ John went on, ‘Yeah, It’s been . . . hard. Doesn’t stop being hard. When I signed up in 92, still grieving and wanting to do something different, something meaningful, we thought article 125 was on its way out. Thought Clinton was on our side.’ John was surprised to hear himself say so much - he hadn’t talked about this to anyone for so long. ‘Never imagined the utter fuck-up that is DADT. It’s made things worse, even if it pretended to make things better.’

‘Fuck Clinton, eh?’ Rodney said with a half-smile.

‘I’d rather not,’ John retorted, and they both sniggered.

They fell into a less awkward silence, and then finally Rodney asked, ‘Colonel . . . John?’

‘Yeah, Rodney?’

‘I’d . . . like to give you a hug. May I?’

‘Yeah, I’d like that.’

Rodney came up to him and gave John a great bear hug, engulfing him in those strong, capable arms. John slipped his own arms round the middle of Rodney’s back and squeezed back, tipping his head onto the man’s shoulder. 

‘I’m sorry I’m a dickhead,’ he said into the fabric of Rodney’s uniform.

‘I’m sorry you’re a dickhead too,’ Rodney said with a chuckle. ‘I seem to be oddly fond of you even so.’


	4. Year Three

‘Colonel!’ Rodney’s panicked voice came through to John as if through deep water. ‘Carson!’

‘Damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have let him take that wee detour to release the wraith. He’s going into shock. Get him onto the bench, elevate his legs!’

‘What, did you do a tarot reading to come up with that wild guess?’ Rodney was sounding more worried than John had heard him in a while. ‘We have no idea what the wraith feeding process can do to a human body . . . beyond the obvious! Just because he looks like he just drank from the fountain of youth, we don’t know what his body’s been through!’

While Rodney groused (something John always found oddly soothing), he helped John lie down on the bench in the jumper, and slid a cargo box under his legs.

‘Aye, Rodney, we don’t, but I know shock when I see it, and that’s serious enough. Let’s get a blanket round him.’

John was shivering uncontrollably. It felt like the wraith had poured ice water into his veins. The reverse feeding had felt good at first. But now he was sure it had done something really fucked up to him. He felt a blanket being put round him, Rodney’s jacket over that, and it made no difference to the cold, but was comforting. He liked Rodney’s smell.

‘Reassure him, Rodney. Keep him calm.’

‘Are you nuts? How’m I supposed to do that when I’m having a panic attack myself?’

‘Rodney!’ The scot was stern. ‘You’re the man’s best friend. It’s your job.’

‘I am?’

_Oh Rodney._

John’s eyes were closed but he felt Rodney settle down on the floor beside the bench.

‘Um . . .’ John would have smiled if everything in his body didn’t feel so terrifyingly wrong. He heard a sigh and a hand reached out to stroke his hair. Rodney’s touch felt like an anchor. Tendrils of warmth spread out from where the other man’s fingertips made contact with John’s forehead.

‘It’s going to be okay, John. It’s shock. You just need to rest and let your body get oxygen back to the places it needs to go.’ For all the anxiety in Rodney’s voice, it was still reassuring. 

‘Try to breathe, long and deep, and just think of clear blue skies.’

It wasn’t hard to think of skies and flying with Rodney touching him that way. If it took being fed on by a wraith to get Rodney McKay’s fingers carding though his hair, it was almost a bargain worth making. Slowly, John’s shaking began to still.

‘You know you’re ridiculously lucky, right? To have been fed on by a wraith and come out looking even more beautiful?’ Rodney’s tight voice sounded almost indignant. ‘Don’t fuck it up by having complications.’

John huffed a response to this. He could tell by Rodney’s tone and touch that there was a world of care and affection there. He opened his eyes onto Rodney’s blues and the other man withdrew his hand, uncertain. John grabbed for it, placing it over the agonizing feeding scar on his chest, seeking Rodney’s warmth to replace the ice in his veins.

He could swear Rodney’s stout, solid hand was drawing out the chill. At last his system began to calm.

‘Thanks,’ he gritted out, closing his eyes again and allowing himself to drift.

***

John woke to the oddly soothing sound of McKay’s typing. He knew it was Rodney – nobody else typed quite like it, super-fast and with every now and then a little “so there” or a “ha” sounding loud and clear through the keyboard strokes. John watched McKay through half-opened eyes, hunched in one of those plastic chairs with his laptop balanced precariously on his knee. That was going to ruin the man’s bad back. 

Despite the preoccupation of work, there was worry in Rodney’s eyes and a tension across his back from more than just bad posture. Huh, when had John gotten so good at reading the other man? He wanted to get behind him and give Rodney a good neck massage, but they didn’t do that. They’d somehow managed to clamber from misunderstandings and fuck-ups to a place of friendship – good friendship, but sometimes John still mourned the things he sensed they could have been had he not been such a gigantic ass.

Rodney must have sensed he was being watched. He looked up and caught John’s gaze. Something puzzled and hesitant passed across his face before being replaced with a more pleased look.

‘About time! I really thought you were never going to wake up!’ Rodney made it sound like it was John’s fault, that he was guilty of mere oversleeping, but the undercurrent of worry was obvious.

‘Sorry – having the life sucked out of you then restored kinda takes it out of a guy,’ John shivered at the memory – he was going to need a lot of time with Kate to get over this one. 

Rodney paled, and failed to come back with a witty retort. 

_C’mon, McKay, play the game,_ John thought. He could always rely on Rodney to banter past their real feelings, but apparently not this time.

‘I really thought we’d lost you,’ Rodney said, his face open to all the pain and loss he felt. 

‘I really thought I was lost,’ John admitted, his voice suddenly rough.

‘You had our six. Nobody had yours.’

‘That’s the job, McKay.’

‘I hate it. I fucking hate that your life keeps getting put on the line like it doesn’t matter as much as . . .’ he trailed off.

‘It doesn’t,’ John insisted.

‘Well it does to me, okay? It does to me, and I won’t let that happen again, understand?’

There was no point in John telling Rodney that some variables were out of his control. John was going to keep putting himself between Rodney and the flying bullets, but it felt good to know someone was looking out for him, that the one person he was most likely to exchange his life to save valued what John would willingly cast away.

‘Love you too, Rodney.’ John meant that to sound glib, but it came out sincere. Well, fuck. It was true anyhow. He let his eyes close, not wanting to see McKay’s reaction. There was silence for a long time after that, and then finally the tapping of keys.

***

John wanted to like Jeannie, he really did. She was kind of like a female version of Rodney, just as big a personality, just as autistic, just as sharp-edged, just as soft-centred. But from the moment she set foot in Atlantis, Rodney was a bundle of tension. Others put it down to sibling competitiveness, but John _knew_ there was more to it. 

John might not be a scientist, but he was good at observation and putting facts together. Fact one: despite the story that he’d fallen out with Jeannie over her life choices, Rodney seemed relaxed enough when she talked about Madison and Kaleb. Fact two: when Jeannie had used Rodney’s nickname, “Mer”, in front of him and Weir, there had been a subtle reaction in Rodney that John recognised from the field – that wasn’t irritation, it was _fear._

He didn’t know what to do with these facts, but he quietly observed, waiting for more intel.

It was a couple of days after her arrival before they all had a chance to socialise together over dinner. Jeannie eyed the tava bean stew with suspicion while John and Rodney tucked in with gusto. John noticed how she kept calling Rodney “Mer” and how much he kept wincing at that. But what really stood out were the ways in which Jeannie competed with her older brother, trying by turns to put him down or nudge him out of the conversation entirely. John kept trying to steer the conversation onto safer ground, but it wasn’t easy.

‘So Jeannie, thanks for bringing the new _Battlestar Galactica_ reboot over with you. It looks promising,’ John said, in another attempt to divert the conversation. He and Rodney had watched two episodes last night when Rodney was too wired after pulling an all-nighter to wind down on his own. Rodney had eventually fallen asleep on John’s bed and John had left him snoring quietly and looking kind of adorable, rolling out a sleep-mat on the floor to make his own bed.

‘Oh my goodness, wasn’t it good? And Starbuck . . . such an improvement on the original,’ Rodney sighed appreciatively.

‘Oh, you so fancied Dirk Benedict back in the 70s and you know it,’ teased Jeannie, her voice a little mean. ‘Although I think Apollo had the edge over Starbuck, didn’t he? Remember that big poster you had on your bedroom door? I swear you used to kiss it every night.’

Rodney just shifted uncomfortably and glared at her. John was beginning to dislike the woman – there was no way she could know Rodney was out to him about his bisexuality. That was pretty low.

‘Right there with you, buddy. Richard Hatch was _hot_. So was Starbuck,’ John said pointedly. ‘Though I went off Dirk when he was in the A-Team – entirely too oily.’ The remark seemed to roll right off Jeannie. 

‘He was oily in _Galactica_ in all honesty. I thought he was kinda funny in the A Team though,’ Rodney said, clinging onto the conversational lifeline John had thrown him, ‘and that gag with the Cylon in the opening credits . . . the show didn’t take itself too seriously.’

‘True. I used to love how they could build a dozen working bombs from bits and pieces lying around in whatever barn they got locked in. Bit like you in that respect, McKay.’ John looked across at Jeannie, ‘McKay here’s our very own MacGyver. Saved our collective asses more times than I can count. Your brother’s a real deal hero.’

Rodney blushed a little at this, looking quietly pleased. Jeannie, on the other hand, just changed the subject. Wow, she was a real piece of work.

‘So, tell me about yourself, John . . . how did a nicely mannered boy like you wind up in the US Air Force?’ she asked him.

‘Not much to tell . . . I wanted to fly, and they had the really fast planes,’ he looked at Rodney, but Rodney just rolled his eyes in a “what ya gonna do?” way. 

‘No planes out here,’ she observed, a questioning look in her face that made John squirm a little. He felt like she might dismantle him if she could, to find out how he worked. Flying wasn’t really his motivation to join the USAF, but he wasn’t about to tell her about needing to leave a life weighed down with grief, or his idealistic hope that the world was changing for queers and he could be part of that. If he’d really been a flying nut he wouldn’t have ended up in rotorcraft.

‘No, but there are spaceships I can fly with my mind,’ John retorted. ‘That sorta makes up for it.’

‘I’ll bet it does,’ she agreed.

‘Plus . . . who’s gonna say no to working in outer space? It’s every nerd’s dream.’

‘And you’re a nerd?’ she looked disbelieving. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you’re way too good looking to be a nerd.’

Was Jeannie flirting with him? Talk about barking up the wrong tree. Plus . . . married with a kid!

‘Trust me, Jeannie, you’re so not his type,’ Rodney chided.

‘What? I was just getting to know your friend, _Meredith._ ’ 

Her face was triumphant and more than a little malicious. Rodney’s was a picture of betrayal. The only other time John had seen colour drain from his friend’s face that fast was when he’d been given a life-threatening gut wound.

And finally, _finally_ the penny dropped. John realised a piece of the puzzle he’d been missing all this time. He looked at Rodney with new awareness, and Rodney caught his look, horrified.

‘It used to be a man’s name, I’ll have you know,’ he protested, ‘it means “Lord of the Sea”.’

‘Oh,’ John responded, as disingenuously as he could, ‘I did not know that.’ He tried to give Rodney a reassuring little smile, but Rodney wouldn’t meet his eyes. John knew the truth, and Rodney knew he knew.

*** 

There wasn’t much time while Jeannie was there to talk to Rodney, so John contented himself with not letting her get away with misnaming Rodney and trying to share embarrassing and potentially revealing stories about his past. 

He felt a mixture of emotions about his newfound knowledge. There was shame and discomfort – it felt as if he’d walked in on Rodney during a private moment, seen something not intended for him. It had robbed Rodney of the chance to tell his own story in his own way and time. But he couldn’t pretend there wasn’t also some positive aspect to this – to know his friend better, to be able to empathise with him in a new way.

He thought about talking to Rod about it, giving himself a trial run, but that seemed deceitful, so he kept his counsel. And finally, the day was saved, Jeannie was going home, seemingly having laid at least some of her baggage with her brother to rest, and Rodney was ever so slightly less of a ball of anxious energy for not having his sister here spilling all his secrets.

John turned up at McKay’s door with a blanket over his arm, a flagon of Belkan ale, and two metal cups.

‘Beer on the pier?’ he invited. Rodney looked hunted, poor man, but came along meekly. What the hell did he think John was going to do?

John had thought and thought about what to say. “I don’t see you any differently” would be the truth, but it was patronising, and suggestive that there was a reason he _should._ “I still want you to fuck me insensible as much as I did before” was a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen, and anyhow it could be interpreted as curiosity or fetishising and oh, but John’s feelings were a long way from that. He didn’t want or need to ask questions, either. He knew all he needed to, and it didn’t change a damn thing other than giving him that big old “aha” moment over all those puzzling little questions that had gone before.

‘Look, I’m shit at finding the right words, but I just want you to know . . .’ god, he so needed to get these words right and he wasn’t at all sure how to do it ‘. . . I don’t need you to talk about it but if ever _you_ need to, you can. I mean, we’ve established I’m clueless – although maybe I’m a little less so than I used to be, thanks to you – but I do know what it’s like living with the stress of keeping secrets. I’m here for you, buddy. I’m on your side. No matter what.’

Rodney didn’t reply, and John wondered if he’d still got that wrong, even after all the thinking. But the man seemed to relax, ever so slightly, and maybe he could count that as a win. John poured out the ale and passed one of the cups to his friend. Rodney took it, drained it, and passed it back to John.

‘Rodney, your hypoglycemia . . .’

‘Fuck my hypoglycemia.’ He drained a second cup, but when John reached for the empty, he held it back. They stared out to sea for the longest time, and then finally Rodney spoke.

‘Did you know that Rod was cis? If you’re wondering why I’m a ball of anxiety and pretty much hate people and he’s so open and easygoing . . . well, it could be because he’s cis and I’m . . . I’m trans.’

John knew what it cost Rodney to say that out loud. He’d clearly gone to great lengths for people not too know.

‘I didn’t know that.’ John replied. ‘About Rod, I mean. Explains a lot, though. He seemed kinda dull and straight. Not really my cup of tea, if I’m honest.’

‘You’re just saying that,’ Rodney said, the edge of a slur in his voice. Belkan ale was not to be trifled with.

‘No, Rodney, I’m really not.’

John thought about it – the fact that Rodney did it for him in a way Rod just didn’t. He wouldn’t say it didn’t _matter_ that Rodney was trans because clearly it did – being trans was just one of the ingredients that made up the package that was Rodney McKay. And it was a _perfect_ package. 

He imagined what it had been like for Rodney, imagined why he was so mistrustful of gay guys. Had he been rejected, pushed out of spaces? John finally understood why Rodney had probed John on his thoughts about what makes a man all that time ago. He still didn’t think he could answer the question “what makes someone a man?” although he’d answer differently now than he did then. He certainly knew a man when he’d fallen head over heels for one.

‘You know you can’t tell anyone, right? Other than Carson, who knows my medical history, obviously,’ Rodney said later, his voice beginning to really slur. ‘I mean, what I did, what I had to hack, to be able to do this work . . . I really wanted it, John, and they never would’ve taken me if they knew. Trans people just don’t get to do this stuff.’

‘Rodney, I’m not going to tell anyone. And I’ll back you to the hilt if anyone finds out.’

‘They’ll lock me up and throw away the key if anyone finds out I doctored government records.’

‘I won’t let them do that. You’re too valuable.’ _I couldn’t lose you,_ he wanted to say. 

Oh, hang it all. ‘I couldn’t lose you, Rodney,’ He said, ducking his head and scratching at the back of his neck to avoid dealing with Rodney’s reaction.

‘That’s sweet,’ Rodney said, and reached across and took John’s hand in his own sturdy grip. ‘You know, for a cis monosexual, you’re actually okay.’

John leaned into Rodney, tilting his head against the other man’s. 

‘Yeah, well, you’re more than okay, McKay.’

***

‘I can’t believe you’re just going to leave.’ Ronon didn’t look angry, just miserable. And painfully young.

‘Not much choice, buddy. They’ve locked us out of Atlantis. It’s theirs now.’ John didn’t even try to hide the break in his voice. Ronon’s little-boy-lost look mirrored exactly how he felt. 

Ronon turned away, ostensibly to start breaking down the firing range, but John could see the other man’s shoulders shake slightly. 

He remembered the feral runner they took in over a year ago, the way Ronon had gone all out to impress them with his military prowess and survival skills. All he’d really been looking for was a place to call home and people to call friends after 7 Satedan years alone. 

God, Ronon had been so young when the wraith took him. They’d worked it out once, and in earth years he’d been about nineteen. On Sateda, that was old enough to have served in the military for long enough to be accomplished, but it was still painfully young, and 7 years (Satedan years were a little shorter, but still) on the run had made Ronon simultaneously old beyond his years and still in some ways left behind in his teens. It certainly hadn’t given him a second to think about where he fit in the world. 

But John had wanted to adopt Ronon as his from the moment they met. He didn’t have words for it – brothers in arms, chosen kindred, maybe, or maybe Ronon was the younger sibling John never had and desperately didn’t want to lose. It ached to be saying goodbye to him, as much as to Teyla and Atlantis. 

But three million light years was too great a gulf to bridge. This was over and his feelings on that didn’t mean squat.

‘You’ll stick with Teyla, right, buddy?’ John felt suddenly terrified for the young man having another home wrenched from him. But Teyla would ground him. She’d taken him under her wing from the start, and John knew there was stuff between them he wasn’t privy to. At least a part of the team would stay together.

‘Course,’ Ronon grunted, pulling down the targets roughly and keeping his face hidden.

‘Good. That’s good.’ John said, though nothing right now felt like it would ever be good again.

Ronon straightened up, his back to John, and smeared his upper arm across his face a couple of times before turning around.

‘You need to look after McKay. It’s important. You don’t realise how much he needs you.’

‘I think you have that backwards, buddy.’

Ronon rolled his eyes. ‘You’re both stupid,’ he said bluntly. ‘But promise me.’

‘I’ll look after McKay, Ronon. Course I will. How can I not?’ 

_He’s all I’ll have left._

*** 

John was beginning to regret his choice of accommodation. The fact that this place was a cross between Legoland a shrine to Dr Who wasn’t the issue. Seeing little glimpses of Rodney McKay’s world everywhere he looked was comforting. But it was also painful, because the one thing missing was Rodney, who was 800 miles away in Nevada.

John ached for Atlantis, cursing Helia and her crew for taking it from him, but he had to admit, being without Atlantis would be a thousand times easier if he didn’t have to be without Rodney. They talked, of course, every day, but the conversation was stilted and loaded with all the things that were unsaid. It was no comfort to John that Rodney was as miserable as him.

He’d just got back from a two-day mission to a mining planet with a serious bug problem. Skin still crawling despite forty minutes in the shower, he was on his second beer when the buzzer rang. He’d ordered in enough pizza to see him through the weekend. Grabbing his wallet, he pulled out the fee and a generous tip – it was chucking it down out there and it must be a miserable job in this weather. At least John got well compensated for spending two days knee-deep in insect cocoons and a really special kind of bug poop.

He opened the door and there was Rodney McKay, dripping on the doormat like someone had tipped a bucket of water over him. John’s heart fast-cut through a wild series of emotions, starting at joy and ending at dismay – Rodney looked so damn miserable.

‘I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry,’ Rodney said, reading his last look.

‘Rodney, god . . . no, it’s good to see you, it’s just . . . look, get in here, lemme get you a towel or something. How come you’re so wet?’

‘I . . . may have walked around a bit, after the taxi dropped me . . . wasn’t sure about coming in.’

John went and grabbed the biggest, fluffiest towel he could find, and another for good measure, and brought them back to where the other man was standing dripping on the doormat in a slowly forming puddle. He wrapped one towel around McKay’s shoulders and handing the other for him to towel his hair.

‘Rodney, it’s _your_ home.’

‘But _you’re_ here.’

‘Is that it?’ John felt a stab of hurt. ‘I can leave, go to a motel, it’s no trouble . . .’

‘NO! No, please, don’t go, I just . . .’ God, he looked so sad, John just wanted to wrap himself around Rodney like that towel.

‘Rodney, what’s wrong? Talk to me, buddy.’

‘I . . .’ Rodney took a deep breath, as if preparing to say something big, but then the buzzer went again.

‘Oh – that’s probably pizza. You hungry?’ Rodney nodded dejectedly. ‘Look, why don’t you get into some dry clothes while I get this?’

While Rodney disappeared into his bedroom, leaving a little trail of drips on the floor, John fetched plates (when did he ever eat pizza off of _plates_? But something about Rodney’s presence spurred him to make the effort). He grabbed a bottle of wine he’d picked up on a whim a week ago, and a couple of glasses, then he tried to ask the lights to dim, feeling confused for a moment when they didn’t respond to his thoughts, before getting that now-familiar ache of missing Atlantis. He reached for the dimmer switch and settled the light to a more cosy level.

He missed Atlantis, but Rodney was here, and it felt like a piece of himself had been returned.

Rodney came back out in sweats and a worn, grey _Star Wars_ T-shirt that clung to his thick biceps and broad shoulders. His feet were bare and vulnerable and that _should not_ have been having such a strong effect on John. What was it with his fetish for McKay’s hands and feet? 

Rodney sat on his own couch like he wasn’t sure he belonged there. Shoulders up around his ears, hands tightening on his knees, elbows locked. John sat next to him and opened the wine. Rodney took in the plates, the glasses, the bottle in John’s hand and then his eyes went up to the dimmed lights and widened a little.

‘This is . . . er . . .’ he stammered.

 _Too much. Too obvious._ ‘I’m sorry,’ John said, ‘I guess I just wanted to . . . you looked sad. Wanted to cheer you up.’

Rodney smiled, then, a small, vulnerable, slightly hopeful flicker across his face.

‘Thank you, that’s . . .’ he trailed off, and went silent, looking sad again.

‘C’mon, let’s eat,’ John said at length, when it became clear Rodney wasn’t going to say any more. He loaded their plates and passed the over-topped pizza to his friend, throwing chilli flakes and extra parmesan over his and inhaling the first slice just for something to do.

Rodney ate his own pizza slowly and thoughtfully, his shoulders still so hunched John wanted to get behind the man and unknot them. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what was going on, but the silence was killing him.

‘Oh hey, I TiVo’d _Alien,_ wanna watch?’ Because yeah, taking away Rodney’s opportunity to talk was _exactly_ what was required here, he berated himself.

Rodney just nodded, but his shoulders moved a little way down from his ears.

John put the film on. He hadn’t watched it in years, and he wasn’t prepared for how it would impact after years of fighting _actual_ homicidal aliens in outer space. About a third of the way in, he was seriously regretting it. Rodney was uncharacteristically quiet beside him, looking pale and still unbearably tense.

‘I actually can’t watch this,’ Rodney said finally, an apologetic look to John.

 _Oh, thank god._ John had been beginning to wonder if the film was going to give him PTSD flashbacks.

‘Me either,’ he admitted, turning the whole thing off. ‘So . . . that was a bad plan.’

‘Maybe I should go to bed,’ Rodney said, beginning to push himself up from the couch.

John reached for him, pressing a hand gently on his shoulder, urging him to sit back down. ‘Or, you could talk to me?’

Rodney looked across at John sceptically. 

‘Come on, how bad can it be? We’re friends, remember?’ He emptied the last of the wine into their glasses and looked at Rodney expectantly.

‘I hate being in Nevada,’ Rodney said, sagging in his seat. 

‘Missing Atlantis, huh?’ John responded.

‘No,’ Rodney said firmly. ‘I mean yes, I miss Atlantis like crazy, but that’s not my biggest problem.’ 

Rodney took his glass and swirled it around, looking intently at the little burgundy whirlpool he’d created, as if some answer was to be found there. 

‘So what _is_ your biggest problem?’ John prompted at last.

‘It’s you,’ Rodney said, and John’s stomach lurched.

‘I haven’t even been around!’ John could hear himself whine.

‘Yeah. Exactly. That’s the problem.’

John could only say, ‘huh?’

‘John, I can manage without Atlantis – just. But it seems . . . I can’t manage without you,’ he looked so vulnerable as he said it, but John’s heart swelled in response.

‘Fuck, McKay. You took the words out of my mouth.’

‘Really?’ Rodney’s look brightened.

‘Really,’ John assured him.

Rodney wriggled closer to John, leaning into him ever so slightly, a solid weight against his side. John was pretty sure his heart was beating a bassline loud enough for Rodney to hear.

‘Erm . . . the thing is . . . I mean, I might just . . .’

‘Rodney,’ John said, because really he couldn’t let the man be brave all by himself, ‘I’m in love with you.’

‘Oh.’ Rodney seemed to become liquid in response to John’s words, melting into John’s side. ‘Yes. That. It’s that. I mean, me too. That’s the problem.’

John tilted his head against Rodney’s, aching to kiss him, but careful and hesitant. ‘I don’t see how it’s a problem.’

They sat there like that for a long moment, heads pressed together, their breathing synchronised, albeit a little laboured. John didn’t know how to keep his heart inside his chest for the feelings of anxiety and elation. What he wanted was within reach, but he was so afraid of fucking it up.

Rodney moved his hand across and over John’s, where it lay on the couch between them. He slid his fingers into the space between John’s, squeezing down ever so gently. The thrill of the other man’s touch damn near blew John’s head off. 

‘There’s stuff . . . we should talk about,’ Rodney said.

‘Okay,’ John said patiently.

Rodney drew a long breath. ‘So, there are things you need to know about me, before you decide . . .’

‘No, wait,’ John interrupted. ‘Rodney, I already decided.’

Rodney’s eyes widened. ‘But, you need to know . . .’

‘I’ve known you for nearly three years, Rodney. I know enough to make an informed decision, doncha think?’

‘But . . .’

God, John desperately wanted to kiss that look of confusion right off Rodney’s face. He was just about to ask if he could do just that when Rodney’s phone buzzed angrily from its place on the coffee table, making them both jump. “Apollo'' flashed across the screen. That was the fleet’s newest ship, not quite spaceworthy yet, but many of its systems were online.

‘What?’ Rodney said grumpily after he reached for the phone, and then his face transformed from irritable to furious. ‘They did _what_? Well, that’s it, they’re all fired.’ He stomped over to where he’d thrown his overnight bag and picked it up. ‘Yes, you can beam me over now.’

Rodney just had time to give John a look of genuine regret, and then he was gone in a flash of light.

John just stared at the spot where Rodney had been, not knowing what to think, and having no idea what to do with himself now Rodney had been snatched away for whatever emergency was happening in Area 51. He was just reaching for his wine when there was another flash.

‘Shoes!’ Rodney said as he materialised back in the flat. John smirked and stood, taking a step toward him, but he was already gone, running into the bedroom to fetch a dry pair of trainers and socks, which he tucked under his arm, his feet still bare. He took out his phone to signal the _Apollo,_ but then tilted his head, as if thinking, and stepped towards John.

‘I’m sorry. I’ll be back next weekend, assuming the morons I work with don’t rip a hole in the fabric of space-time.’

‘Sure – go deal with your emergency.’ John put his hand up to grip Rodney’s bicep, and Rodney hesitated.

‘Erm . . .’ he stepped closer still, and pressed the briefest of kisses to John’s lips, and then stepping backward, pressed a button on his phone and was gone.

*** 

It was a beautiful, moonlit night. The restaurant was swanky. Rodney looked hotter than hell in a dark blue jacket with a darker shirt underneath. John was pretty sure McKay had bought it specially, and now he felt underdressed in his own crumpled black shirt and jeans, even if they were the ones that nicely showed off his ass.

It was lovely to see Elizabeth and Carson, really it was, but John was having trouble thinking of anything but Rodney. It had been a week since their mutual declarations and brief kiss, a week in which Rodney had worked 36-hour days and fallen into bed for the briefest stints between, sending John little text updates and occasional daft cat memes but never having time to pick up the phone. And no, they wouldn’t let him use the _Apollo’s_ beam for personal use – he’d finally flown back tonight and come straight from the airport, so they’d had not a second of privacy.

John’s week had consisted of accepting the reality of dating one of the most important physicists on the planet, in between his own busy offworld schedule that this time had involved less bugs but the annoyance of Wallace’s broken ankle.

In his downtime, John had read every advice page the internet could come up with on what he needed to know about dating a trans man. He desperately didn’t want to let the man down.

If he ever got a moment alone with him, which was beginning to feel elusive. Sometimes, he began to wonder if it had all been a dream, or if McKay had gone off the whole idea.

But every now and then he’d get a shy and sightly flirty glance from Rodney and he knew they were on the same page. His heart unclenched then, and he gave little reassuring smiles back.

‘What’s going on with the two of you?’ Elizabeth said, glancing from Rodney to John and back again after the waiter brought their deserts.

‘What? Nothing!’ Rodney said with his usual spectacular inability to cover up anything. Which, to be fair, was one of the many things John loved about the man.

‘Well, I don’t know about Rodney, but what’s going on with _me_ is a sub-par gate team, lukewarm assignments, and ten times the paperwork we had back on Atlantis. What’s going on with you, Elizabeth?’ John offered her the smoothest smile he could, refusing to allow her to call him on his misinterpretation of her question.

‘Honestly I’m used to having the two of you where I can keep an eye on you,’ Elizabeth said sadly. ‘It feels odd.’

The conversation trailed off, then, and John started to daydream about what he was going to do when he finally got Rodney alone. Maybe a moonlit stroll through Memorial Park to walk off the rich meal. He wondered if Rodney was a hand-holder. Because god, he _wanted_ that. One of the great things about being trained in hand-to-hand combat was knowing he could walk around at night holding hands with a guy and still be safe. But Rodney might not feel that way, he realised. Things would’ve been way less safe for Rodney back when.

He found himself reaching out to Rodney, pressing his foot against McKay’s under the table, and McKay pressed back. Just that little touch sent a jolt right through him.

Jeez, he was really _gone_ on this guy.

Elizabeth was asking Carson about Cadman and John realised he needed to drag himself out of his daydream before he threw himself across the table at McKay and undid all his promises to himself to take things slow.

‘You should call her,’ he said to Carson, refocusing his attention into the conversation. Rodney gave a little ‘mmm,’ in response, but John wasn’t clear if that was an agreement or a murmur of pleasure in response to his desert. Rodney could be relied on making near-pornographic sounds whenever he was fed anything sugary. God, he was so going to feed Rodney chocolate in bed one day . . .

Oh. So much for paying attention to the conversation.

‘It didn't work out,’ Carson was saying. ‘May have something to do with our first kiss being through Rodney.’

John remembered that kiss. Remembered his jolt of jealousy, and later the way he’d allowed McKay’s reaction to reinforce in John the idea he was homophobic. 

‘Oh, I thought we made a solemn vow never to speak of that again!’ Rodney grimaced, and yeah, if John didn’t know better, he could really misconstrue that discomfort.

Not long after that, Elizabeth tried to bail with half her desert untouched on her plate and suddenly John realised that he was so wrapped up in his new love that he’d actually forgotten how completely fucking awful it was being severed from Atlantis.

And that’s when the mountain called.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the awesome Salchat for her beautiful drawing of sad, slightly damp McKay
> 
> <https://archiveofourown.org/works/28047687>


	5. Epilogue

It had been over  _ two weeks _ since their brief kiss in McKay’s apartment, and John was beginning to feel a tiny bit frustrated. He’d got all worked up over Rodney’s brilliance getting them back into Atlantis and beating the replicators and then . . . nothing.

Well, life had been a  _ little _ busy since they got back, and so at first John had understood how every time he sought the man out, he’d either been impossible to find or incapable of distraction. Rodney was bouncing off the walls with glee at having a full ZPM (and more than a little miffed the SGC were taking the other two), and John was enjoying watching his manic energy from a distance, but at the same time feeling jealous of Atlantis and all the McKay attention she was getting.

John was still waiting to feel that focus on him, those lips on his, those clever hands on his body. As the days grew in number, John began to feel neglected, and then avoided. Was Rodney having second thoughts?

Eventually, he cornered McKay, alone, in the ZPM room. 

‘Hey McKay,’ he drawled, ‘whatcha doin?’

‘I’m taking readings – what does it look like I’m doing?’ Rodney sounded the slightest bit defensive, and John wondered if he’d caught his . . . friend, teammate and would-be lover in the act of simply admiring their new acquisition. 

‘Pretty, isn’t she?’ John said teasingly.

‘What?’ McKay sounded distracted, and a little perplexed.

‘I’m just checking I haven’t been thrown over for someone beautiful and golden with the personality of a small sun . . .’

‘Huh?’ Rodney knitted his brows, then looked at the ZPM and laughed. ‘Oh! No, though I can’t deny her attraction . . .’

John was done hinting. He needed to be direct, even though his heart was in his mouth. He stepped into Rodney’s space, so the man’s tablet was almost pressed against his chest and caught Rodney’s gaze. 

‘So, no cold feet?’ he asked, ‘you just busy?’ He didn’t touch Rodney, even though the man was inches away. Even though he wanted to press the length of his body against the other man and wrap around him like a vine.

‘I  _ am _ busy,’ Rodney responded thoughtfully, ‘and my feet are just fine, thanks for asking.’ But there was unmistakable hesitation in his voice.

‘But . . .’

Rodney sagged. ‘But . . .’ he put his tablet down and gave John an honest appraisal. John’s heart was suddenly in his mouth. Rodney looked so apprehensive John was sure he was about to break bad news.

‘I’m scared, John. Purely and simply scared. I haven’t dated a cis gay man before and I’m worried what your expectations might be.’

‘My expectations? Are to spend time together, when we can. To finish the kiss we started. The rest? I’m easy. And in no rush.’

Rodney’s shoulders dropped a little at this, and his face looked somewhat less forlorn. Damn, it made John a little mad at his community for making trans guys so unsure of their welcome. John didn’t need Rodney’s medical history to know he was attracted to the man. The details could be worked out. But then John remembered his own potential dealbreaker. Rodney put out toppy energy, but what if he liked to be topped?

‘Er . . . you should probably know something about me, though . . .’ he knew he needed to put this really carefully. 

‘Go on,’ Rodney said, looking worried.

‘I’m not into fucking people,’ John said. ‘I’m sorry if that’s a problem, but it just isn’t my thing. Anything else is fine by me. Anything,’ he stressed the word again because he didn’t want to be misunderstood.

‘You like to be fucked?’ Rodney asked, his tone careful.

‘With absolutely anything you might have to hand, yes,’ John said, trying to ignore the frisson of excitement he felt when Rodney talked about sex. ‘If you’re into it. Not a dealbreaker if not, though.’

Rodney smiled. ‘I’m into it. I’m not into being fucked either, so that works out.’ He still looked nervous, although perhaps a little less so.

John stepped a fraction closer to Rodney. ‘I’m not going anywhere. And there’s nothing to be scared of. Take your time.’

Rodney looked at John intently for a second. ‘We should talk . . . about things.’

‘If you like. Whatever helps,’ John replied.

‘There’s stuff you should know,’ Rodney said a little helplessly.

‘I’m sure I’ll figure it out as we go, but it’s up to you,’ John said firmly. ‘I’ve done my homework, and there’s nothing that’s going to surprise me or throw me for a loop.’

‘Oh. Well . . . thank you,’ Rodney said, as if he needed to be grateful for John being a bare minimum decent guy.

‘S’okay. S’what you do when you’re really into a guy and want to not fuck things up.’

‘I just don’t want you to assume . . .’ Rodney started up again, clearly not letting go of whatever was worrying him, but he trailed off, leaving John non-plussed.

‘Rodney. No assumptions. I just want you. I’ve wanted you for as long as I’ve known you, a universal constant. Any damn way I can have you. And I’m prepared to wait as long as it takes.’

‘Oh. That’s . . . oh.’ Rodney flushed a little and inched closer to John. The door swooshed close behind him.

‘I’d really like to kiss you now,’ Rodney said, and John felt suddenly lightheaded. He bit his lip slightly, and nodded.

Rodney took one more step, and their chests were touching. The other man slid his hands round John, one into the small of his back, the other cupped his neck as Rodney pulled him closer, their lips connecting finally.

Oh,  _ god. _ After all the shyness and uncertainty, there was nothing but confidence in McKay’s kiss. It moved in and took charge of John’s mouth with characteristic McKay bossiness and  _ of course _ he was a brilliant kisser because Rodney McKay didn’t do anything he wasn’t brilliant at. His lips and tongue were deft and thorough in their exploration, and John could do little more than let the kiss happen to him. Heat swept through him like wildfire.

‘God, Sheppard. I want you too,’ Rodney said when they broke for air. ‘Always wanted you. Been so damn awkward around you, trying to deal with my ridiculous, inappropriate and hopeless crush.’

_ Oh.  _ Just when John thought he’d got all of the puzzle pieces, there was another he hadn’t factored in.

‘It wasn’t so hopeless. But I’m sorry I made it not safe for you to tell me,’ John said, running his hands up Rodney’s torso, feeling his solidity and reveling in it. 

Rodney went in for another kiss.

‘Oh  _ wow, _ I get to kiss John Sheppard,’ Rodney said at length, like John was something  _ special _ . It made John feel a little dizzy.

‘Silly. ’M’nobody.’

‘You’re somebody to me, John,’ Rodney started to nibble his way down John’s neck, pushing his shirt collar aside to press kisses above his collarbone, and John very nearly melted.

And that’s when John realised he was being turned into a highly aroused  _ puddle _ in the middle of the working day, and, alas, DADT was still a thing and anyhow he and Rodney were  _ professionals. _

‘When do you get off?’ John asked, pulling back slightly and pressing a kiss to Rodney’s brow. 

Rodney groaned. ‘I’m going to resist the glaring innuendo in that sentence.’ He reached for John’s hand almost shyly. ‘Erm . . . do you want to come to mine later? About seven, maybe?’

‘Sure. I’ll bring food.’ If there was one thing John knew about McKay, it was that there wasn’t ever a time when he wasn’t thinking about food.

Rodney smiled, suddenly shy again. ‘Er . . . maybe we could watch something?’

_ To take the pressure off, _ he didn’t say.

‘Sure, I’d like that.’ John went in for one more kiss that was brief and sweet and left him feeling a little floaty.

_ Wow, Shep. You got it bad. _

***

It was pizza night, which was perfect, and there was even real mozzarella instead of that weird, slightly sour yellow stuff from Manaria that Rodney likened to yak cheese. John had snagged a generous number of the square slices and a couple of chocolate puddings. He thought about it for a second or two and opted for just the one spoon. The thought of feeding Rodney chocolate and all those gorgeous noises he made got John more than a little hot under the collar.

‘Hot date, sir?’ Lorne asked him as he exited the mess, and John had to stop himself from gulping.

‘I wish – just going over work schedules with McKay then watching some sci-fi.’ He tried his darndest to make it sound tedious, feeling immediately like a traitor. It did the job on Lorne, though, who actually looked sorry for him.

‘Oh, well, never mind – at least the food looks good.’ Lorne gave John a pitying smile and went into the mess.

John would never stop hating that, but there was a fine line between people having an inkling he was gay and  _ knowing _ when and who he was dating. He sighed. DADT wasn’t going to be around forever, and Rodney knew how to be discreet. He’d kept bigger and more critical secrets than John.

John got to McKay’s quarters and there were  _ candles – _ the round, sweet-smelling ones in little pots that the Athosians made – and the laptop was propped up in front of the couch all ready, with two bottles of Molson stood beside it. Rodney was looking cute in his nerdy way, wearing chinos and a polo shirt, all freshly shaven and smelling of soap and aftershave when he came in for a quick, slightly nervous, kiss.

‘Is that pizza? How very appropriate, given our last, interrupted date,’ Rodney said with a smile. ‘Let’s hope tonight my useless minions don’t decide to try and doom us all to watery graves, and we can finish what we started.’

A thrill went up John’s spine at those words – he wasn’t exactly planning on anything happening tonight, but he couldn’t deny the almost-unbearable levels of want.

‘So what do you have lined up for us?’ John asked.

‘Oh . . . erm,  _ Torchwood?  _ It’s the  _ Dr Who _ spinoff I brought back with me. I’ve not seen it yet but apparently it’s a little more  _ adult  _ than  _ Who.’ _

Rodney said that like it was porn, and that gave John another small thrill.

They sat on Rodney’s couch, leaning into each other, munching through their pizza slices while the show played. Rodney’s hand was on his own thigh, and John watched as it shifted towards him and the little finger extended to touch John shyly. John slid his hand nearer Rodney’s, and their little fingers locked. So small a touch was still thrilling to John – after nearly three years he finally got to do this.

He watched their hands flirting with one another. Almost involuntarily, his own hand turned onto its back as if in submission. Rodney’s accepted the implicit invitation and moved his hand over John’s, clasping down and pressing into John’s thigh. The touch was powerful, at once anchoring and thrilling. They settled just like that for a long while, returning to the show. But John was watching their twined fingers as carefully as Rodney was watching the screen.

‘It’s incredible, isn’t it? He must be the first bi lead of any show I can think of – least of all a sci-fi show.’

‘It’s pretty amazing,’ John conceded. Wasn’t every day they got so see real queer representation, rather than just imagining their favourite characters queer or worse, dealing with queerbaiting - hints and innuendo that never came to fruition.

‘And he’s totally hot, too,’ Rodney said, with typical Mckay obliviousness. John didn’t think so – the man’s smile was too fake, but he didn’t really mind Rodney’s attraction, even if that wasn’t the sort of thing most folks said to their date. Still, maybe it was time to distract McKay from Captain Jack . . .

He began to nuzzle into Rodney’s neck, pressing small, biting kisses into the skin just below his collar. Rodney sighed a little, and tilted his head for better access, but the angle was all wrong, and before John had really thought about what he was doing, he had turned himself around to kneel on the couch next to McKay and give him 100% of his attention. He went in for the other side of Rodney’s neck and the other man sighed with pleasure.

‘Oh, you can do that all you like,’ he said a little breathlessly.

So John made a meal of Rodney’s neck, finding the spots that really made him squirm, and then came back to his mouth, letting his desperation bleed through in the way he explored Rodney’s mouth. Before he knew it, he found himself straddling McKay’s lap and French kissing him like a seventeen-year-old, one hand cupping the back of Rodney’s neck, the other stroking through his hair. And  _ fuck _ but this man was driving him more than a little crazy.

Rodney’s arms had slid around him and now those capable hands were worming their way up inside John’s T-shirt and stroking up the skin of his back, sending thrills up and down his spine. Fingers skimmed under the waistband of his jeans and John longed for them to move lower but was loving the tease. 

‘Erm . . .’ Rodney said, when they broke for air sometime later. ‘Can I just . . .’ he reached out to the laptop and turned it off, dipping John backwards as he did so, but holding him steady in one strong arm. ‘Sorry . . . too much going on and I want to focus all my attention on you.’

_ Oh god. _ John was mush in Rodney’s arms, so far gone he was barely coherent. Not just turned on, but awash with feelings he didn’t remember having for the best part of twenty years. 

He was in real trouble here.

Rodney went back to kissing him, and one of his hands slipped a little further down the back of his jeans, while the other hand slid round to the front of his torso, carding through his chest hair and resting on his left nipple. Rodney’s lips left his mouth and started to gently bite their way down John’s neck while his fingers started to play with John’s nipple until it hardened under his fingers, then moved across to the other one.

‘Oh god, and you can do  _ that _ all you like,’ John said, his voice verging on a moan.

‘Tell me something you like,’ Rodney said, a hand trailing down John’s front. ‘Tell me what you want . . .’

John didn’t have to stop and think.

‘Your hands,’ he said. ‘Those clever fingers.’ Rodney’s hands had always been John’s biggest fetish. ‘Been dreaming of them on me. Been fantasising about them  _ in _ me,’ he was more than a little breathless. I don’t care what you do, just put your hands on me.’

‘We can do that,’ Rodney grinned, playing with John’s nipple some more, and letting his other hand brush the cleft of John’s ass. John shivered deliciously and wriggled in McKay’s lap.

‘Here?’ he asked, ‘or shall we move this to the bed?’

‘God, John, you don’t know how long I’ve been dreaming of you in my bed.’

John still couldn’t quite get his head round that. Rodney McKay being so very into him. He was feeling a little high from it.

‘But . . .’ there was sudden hesitation in Rodney’s voice.

_ Uh-oh. _

‘There’s something I need to talk to you about before we . . . you see, I have this thing . . .’

‘Rodney,’ John smoothed his hands over those broad shoulders, ‘you can talk all you want, but I’d like you to know I don’t  _ need _ you to explain stuff to me. I mean. I did my homework, remember? And I’ll figure stuff out as we go. Unless you want to . . . I mean, I don’t wanna shut you down if you need to talk.’ John desperately wanted to get it all right, but knew he was being awkward in his attempts to reassure.

‘Sheppard, shut the fuck up for a second. Not everything’s about me being trans you know,’ his voice was more indulgent than angry, though. 

‘Oh. M’sorry,’ John felt chastened about the assumption.

‘Right. Well, here’s the thing. I have . . . sensory issues. You may have noticed?’ Rodney looked a little tense and John was suddenly worried about it all going off the rails.

‘Sure I did, and well . . . you’re not the first autistic guy I dated, okay? Don’t worry about it. Whatever you need, it’s cool.’  _ Like not being able to have the TV going in the background without being distracted from my blisteringly hot kisses. _

Rodney’s eyes widened.

‘Shit, McKay. That was an assumption on my part. I shouldn’t’ve said . . .’  _ Christ. _ Way to go, John, subtle as a brick.

‘No . . . erm, I’ve had the feeling I was for a while, but nobody actually ever said it to me. Okay . . .’ Rodney took a deep breath. ‘Well, that’s a conversation we need to have some more another time, but . . .’

‘Your sensory thing.’ John prompted.

‘Yeah, that. The thing is . . . I can get overwhelmed by touch. I mean, I like it in this context, but I get lost in the feeling and lose my ability to focus on what I’m, er,  _ doing _ . Which means, if you want me to do stuff to  _ you _ , you need to not be touching  _ me _ while I do it.’

‘Not a problem,’ John was relieved, because this really wasn’t a first for him. ‘In fact . . . just stay there a minute.’ He kissed Rodney quickly and rose to his feet. Slipping out of Rodney’s quarters he strolled with artificial casualness down the corridor to his own place, which was thankfully close. He went over to the trunk in the corner and pulled out something wrapped in cloth, taking it back to Rodney. 

‘Bought these a while ago, haven’t had a chance to use them yet. Maybe they’d help?’

McKay unwrapped the items and grinned. ‘Oh yes, that’s . . .’ his breath hitched a little. ‘. . . absolutely perfect.’

John smiled – the earnest smile hardly anyone got to see. ‘So how do you want me?’ he asked.

Rodney suddenly straightened a little and looked John up and down in a thoughtful way.

‘So . . . you like to be topped. But do you like to be dominated?’

Oh, John liked that Rodney understood they weren’t the same thing because not everyone did and John wasn’t too good with orders.  _ Most _ of the time. On the other hand, for the right person . . .

‘ _ You _ can boss me around. In fact I’d . . . like it . . . if you would.’ Because McKay’s bossiness had been another one of John’s turn-ons since forever. ‘And I like to be able to let go, give up control. But . . .’

‘But you’d hate it if I took it too seriously, right?’ Oh,  _ bingo.  _ The man really was a genius.

‘Or, yano, I may just fall about laughing and totally ruin the mood.’ John confessed. That had happened once when a guy had called him “boy” and they’d never even made it to the sex.

Rodney smirked. ‘Sex is ridiculous. Anyone who takes it too seriously is missing the point.’

And just like that, John completely relaxed. Now he had another addition to his “why I love Rodney McKay” list. The list was getting  _ long _ .

‘So what you gonna do with me, McKay?’ John smirked at the other man.

Rodney crowded up to John and pulled him into a searing kiss, one hand at the back of his neck. 

‘Okay – let’s see you strip down to your boxers and get on the bed for me.’ His voice was calm, confident. It went straight to John’s dick.

John took of his socks first, then he pulled his tee over his head, stretching like a cat as he did so, enjoying the widening of Rodney’s eyes. Then he stood back and unbuttoned his jeans slowly, carefully pushing them down and stepping out of them. Rodney’s eyes raked over his body, and John tried not to feel self-conscious about the hair, the scars, the lack of bulk no matter how hard he worked out.

Rodney just grinned at him. ‘So fucking hot, Sheppard. Well, chop chop, get on the bed!’

John’s dick jumped at bossy McKay and his boxers were hiding nothing. He climbed onto Rodney’s bed and sprawled in the middle of it, trying to look provocative and spreading his legs slightly. Rodney spluttered just a little at the sight of him, before regaining his composure and giving John an almost-evil grin.

‘Arms above your head. Keep them there,’ Rodney ordered, and John stretched his arms up languorously, his skin already buzzing just from the caress of Rodney’s gaze.

McKay rummaged in his closet, pulling out a belt. Coming over to the bed, he knelt by John’s head and attached the leather cuffs John had brought to his wrists, using the belt to attach the short length of chain that joined the cuffs to . . . well, John wasn’t sure quite  _ what _ Rodney had attached the belt to but he was secure and that was really all that mattered. He wondered if Rodney had already made his bed bondage-ready and the idea of that revved him up. He pulled hard against the restraints, and relaxed when they wouldn’t budge.

‘Oh, that’s . . .’ Rodney’s eyes roved over John appreciatively, and then his hands trailed down John’s torso.

‘God, Rodney,’ John couldn’t believe what a simple touch did for him.

‘I think these are somewhat failing at their job.’ Rodney teased his fingers beneath the waistband of John’s boxers and began to inch them down. Except then he stopped, maddeningly, with them cutting him across the hips, trapping his erection. He pressed hot kisses all the way along the waistline, holding John firmly to the bed as he did so. John wanted to arch into Rodney’s hot breath, but those strong hands held him immobile.

‘Rodney . . .’ John let his frustration bleed through the desire in his voice.

‘Shush, or I’ll have to gag you,’ Rodney said, matter-of-factly, and John fell silent, as if the man had bewitched him. McKay returned somewhat smugly to teasing John, dragging his boxers a fraction lower and making a meal of the exposed skin. When he reached the skin just below John’s navel, he moved lower, huffing hot breath over John’s erection but not making contact. His lips finally landed on John’s inner thigh, and he began nibbling his way just under the hem of John’s boxers. This time, John couldn’t stop himself from squirming with pleasure at the feel of McKay’s mouth on him.

‘Will you just keep still!’ Rodney said, his voice bossy but amused, shoving John down into the mattress so hard it made John quiver with want. His body tensed, ready to push back, but the hands holding him down were strong, and his urge to fight broke like a wave over his body, giving way to complete surrender.

John had long ago recognised that Rodney McKay was a force of nature and you kinda had to just let him happen to you. It seemed like sex with Rodney was going to be no exception to that rule.

‘Oh, nice.’ Rodney grinned at John as he felt John relax under his hands. John grinned back, and Rodney crawled up his body and kissed him, long and slow and teasing, while the hand he wasn’t supporting himself with continued to tease just below the waist of John’s pushed-down boxers. He alternated with sliding his fingers up inside the boxer legs and stroking down the crease of John’s thighs without ever making contact with his cock. He teased and teased until John was quaking with want.

Rodney’s hand left its teasing and slid up John’s torso, as his lips worked their way from John’s mouth to his neck (oh god, he loved having his neck kissed) and then on down past his collarbone to his right nipple at the same moment Rodney’s clever fingers began to tweak his left. John couldn’t suppress a moan this time, cutting it off when he remembered the threat of the gag.

‘Mmmmm,’ Rodney hummed against John’s nipple, sucking just a little harder while his fingers twirled and pinched, making John gasp. ‘I like the sound of you moaning, so go right ahead.’

He renewed his assault on John’s nipples and John couldn’t stay quiet if he tried. He wanted to lift his body right off the bed and push up into Rodney’s hands, but Rodney had made him still and he wasn’t about to move, no matter how much he wanted to.

‘Damn, John. You might just be the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,’ Rodney said, his voice gratifyingly breathless. John’s body flushed with pleasure at the praise.

Rodney finally left John’s nipples alone and slid further down his body, lips and hands following his happy trail downwards and teasing some more at the waistband of his boxers until he nearly lost it, struggling to resist the urge to beg, only holding it together from the firmness of Rodney’s earlier “shush”. John pressed his lips tight together and tried to school the whine out of his moans.

Rodney sat back, and oh-so-carefully pulled the waist of his boxers out and over his erection, not touching his cock. He pulled the boxers down and off, and then surveyed John thoughtfully while John heated up under his gaze.

‘Can you turn over?’ he asked, and John languidly started to roll over onto his font.

‘Stop,’ Rodney said as John was more than halfway round, his left side pressed into the bed, his right knee bent, the other leg straight. Rodney pushed Johns right knee further up the bed, and arranged his body carefully so that he was more-or-less face down but propped up at enough of an angle that his cock couldn’t get any friction on the bed. His face was turned to his right under his stretched-out, restrained arms.

If he hadn’t already known Rodney McKay was an evil genius, this would’ve confirmed it. John desperately wanted to adjust himself to press his body into the bed, and he was one hundred percent certain his teasing lover wouldn’t let him. His cock ached it was so hard and leaked precome where the tip rested gently against the duvet cover. There was no friction to be had anywhere, and no respite for his burning need to be touched.

Rodney got up, then, and went to the dresser behind John, grabbing something he couldn’t see and throwing it on the bed with a light thud. Then he walked around the bed until he was in front of John’s face. He bent down and gave John the sweetest kiss, running fingers through John’s hair as he did so, making him want to purr.

‘I’m crazy about you, John Sheppard. Are you okay? Is this okay?’ There was no uncertainly in his voice, just care, and it made John melt into even more of a puddle than he was already. He nodded furiously, grinning up at McKay and holding the man’s wide blue eyes with his own. 

Rodney settled behind John on the bed and began to map John’s back, neck and shoulders with his hands and mouth.

‘God, you have the sexiest back,’ Rodney said, which was strictly untrue because John’s shoulders were narrow and McKay’s back was enticingly broad, and yet he believed Rodney meant it, that McKay was really into him. He felt those fingers trace down his spine, massaging as they went, followed by hot, breathy kisses. 

The fingers reached John’s crack, teased their way down a little and then fanned out over his ass. Then they travelled back up John’s body and back to his shoulders and John very nearly lost it, unable to stop himself from whining.

‘You know if you get impatient, I’m only going to go slower,’ Rodney said, with all that characteristic McKay sing-song smugness. He started to make a meal of the back of John’s neck and John surrendered to the teasing in all its insufferable perfection. Rodney kissed along John’s hairline and behind his ear, nipping gently at the lobe. Meanwhile, his fingers traced back down his spine achingly slowly, pressing firmly enough for the scientist to feel each vertebra. 

As Rodney’s hand travelled lower he hooked his leg over John’s straightened right leg and it reminded John acutely that the other man was still fully dressed and in control while John was naked and unravelling fast. He wasn’t sure why, but it made him feel both deeply vulnerable and oddly secure. He’d been trusting McKay as a safe pair of hands for a long time now and it seemed like this was no exception.

This time, Rodney’s fingers didn’t stop their journey downwards until they reached his hole, brushing and massaging around it until John wanted to scream out to be fucked.

He felt Rodney fidget, then, and heard the sound of a cap, and fingers rubbing together and then there was a slick, perfect finger massaging at his entrance and John was suddenly in heaven. He bit down on a torrent of begging words that threatened to spill out of his muted mouth as McKay teased (of course he did) around the edge, then slowly slid one of his thick, perfect fingers inside of John.

John moaned so loudly at the feel of Rodney inside him he startled himself. God, he’d longed for this.

Rodney, behind him, dropped kisses onto his back and sounded equally overcome. 

‘God, John. Wanted you for so damn long.’

That single digit took its time, massaging into him oh so carefully and only when John was a breathless, wanton, moaning mess did Rodney slip a second digit inside John, pressing deeper into him and brushing his prostate with deliberately light strokes. John schooled the whine out of his sighs for fear it would only slow the excruciatingly perfect teases.

Then John felt Rodney shift again and he realized the man was straddling his thigh, squirming against him, clearly coming a little undone himself. That ratcheted up John’s arousal by another order of magnitude. McKay’s hot body pressed against him and a third finger pressed into him, this time massaging John’s prostate with focused intent.

John was whimpering with the need to come now, aching from being kept in a state of arousal for so long but at the same time never wanting this to end. The skill and focus from McKay’s hands took his breath away. But John wasn’t the only one here unravelling fast – he could hear Rodney’s breath coming in gasps as the other man’s body writhed against his leg while his fingers began fucking into John hard and fast and oh so perfectly.

Rodney’s sighs mingled with John’s and slowly became soft moans as his thrusts and squirms turned more ragged and imperfect and so fucking right. He could feel his fluttering ass wanting to swallow more of the other man inside of him, his prostate taking a focused pummelling from Rodney’s fingers, so close to the edge he was unbearably near to begging. He knew he’d have to come like this, without his cock being touched, or not at all, and he was so close, so close, and trembling from the damned up pleasure Rodney’s fingers had built in him. A few more hard strokes inside him, just like that, and he’d . . .

John’s climax hit him like pulling g’s and he shouted out, spilling over the duvet despite his cock never having been touched. 

‘Ohhhhh!’ the other man sighed behind him, trembling through an obvious orgasm of his own. All the way through, he continued to massage John’s prostate, triggering a series of aftershocks that damn near blew John’s mind. John was so open to him in that moment he could have taken his whole hand inside him and oh, he was going to look forward to  _ that  _ happening sometime very soon. But for now, Rodney’s fingers inside him gentled and his ebbing pleasure was prolonged into a delicious, sated afterglow.

‘Fucking hell,’ Rodney said eventually, his voice awed. He slipped his fingers gently out of John’s ass, bending to kiss John’s ass cheek almost reverently. Of course the man was prepared – he had a towel within reach and had himself, John and the cover wiped clean in a second, then he wriggled up in front of John and kissed him long and slow, then released him from his restraints.

‘Erm . . . I haven’t come in my pants since I was seventeen!’ he looked shy about it, but John was pretty sure that was the hottest thing that had ever happened to him. ‘I had plans,’ Rodney said a bit ruefully. ‘Wanted that hot mouth of yours on me.’

‘That’s absolutely gonna happen.’ John felt a spark of arousal even though his cock was out for the count. ‘But for now . . .’ he hesitated, suddenly unsure.

‘What, John? Anything.’

‘Want you naked,’ John said, holding his breath.

‘Oh, okay,’ Rodney smiled slightly nervously, and peeled himself out of his clothes carefully and shyly.

John took him in, all broad shoulders and pale skin. He was  _ perfect.  _ John couldn’t wait to explore every inch of Rodney with his mouth.

‘So fucking sexy, McKay,’ John said, pulling the other man close and pressing their naked bodies hard together, twining his legs around his lover’s and kissing him until he was out of breath.

*** 

John woke to the sensation of a hand running through his hair and down the back of his neck. He had his head resting against McKay’s soft, slightly furry belly. His heart went all big in his chest and the rest of him went to mush as Rodney’s deft fingers scritched into his scalp.

‘Morning,’ he murmured into Rodney’s tummy eventually. The light in the room was strong - they’d clearly slept late, but he didn’t feel like moving one little bit.

‘Morning, sleepyhead.’ Rodney’s voice was all soft and full of affection. John could get used to hearing all those hard edges worn smooth. 

Just then, the radio blipped and John reached for it automatically, putting it to his ear before responding.

‘Sheppard.’

‘Oh, Colonel, I believed I was contacting Dr McKay,’ Teyla’s patient voice came over the air, sounding just slightly amused. John’s gut clenched for a second at his mistake, but then he relaxed again. They’d have to tell Teyla and Ronon anyway, they were team. He handed the earpiece to Rodney, looking sheepish.

‘Mckay here,’ Rodney said and then ‘what visions?’ after listening awhile. ‘Okay, we’ll be there in five minutes.’ He looked down at John, who was drifting fingers casually through his fluffy belly hair. ‘Erm . . . actually, can you make that fifteen?’ 

Rodney suddenly looked shy as he stayed on the call. ‘Oh, well thank you,’ he said, as his cheeks pinked up beautifully. ‘Yes, we think so too.’ 

He stayed on for a few beats longer, then turned his attention back to John.

‘What?’ John asked suspiciously, mouthing a trail of kisses to follow the path of his fingertips, but keeping his eyes on McKay’s.

‘She says she’s very happy for us,’ Rodney said, looking a little bit worried. ‘And she thinks we’re a good match for one another.’

‘That we are,’ John agreed, working his way up Rodney’s torso.

‘Yes, and I said so, which means . . . I outed us, sorry.’

‘Don’t care,’ John smiled at his lover and moved up to his mouth, trying to kiss the frown away. ‘Long as you don’t out me to Caldwell, I think we’re safe out here. People have got better things to worry about than who’s fucking who. Not that I don’t think we should be discreet. But I woulda wanted to tell the team.’

‘Oh. Okay, yes, well me too,’ Rodney returned John’s kisses with less hesitancy and John let the other man turn them so McKay was on top of him, pressing him down into the bed. He felt so damn safe with Rodney’s solid weight holding him down. It took a while for them to come up for air.

‘So what else did she say, Rodney?’ John asked, finally remembering Teyla had wanted something.

‘Oh, Ronon says “bout time”.’ Rodney said, distracted by the thorough attention he was giving John’s right earlobe.

‘McKay, what did she  _ need  _ you for? Don’t we have to be getting dressed and going to deal with whatever-it-is?’ John didn’t really want to move, but Teyla wouldn’t disturb people without reason.

Rodney huffed, but reluctantly pulled back from John’s neck. John’s neck felt every bit as reluctant to see him go.

‘Oh. Oh, something about them both having visions of the ghosts of Ancients,’ Rodney sounded sceptical and a little irritated. ‘Honestly, it sounds like they need Heightmeyer more than me. Or maybe a priest.’

_ And there’s the abrasive McKay I know and love.  _ John felt a wave of affection so strongly for the other man it made his breath catch. He reached up and pulled Rodney into a kiss.

‘I really fucking love you, McKay,’ he said, embarrassed by his own soppiness.

Rodney looked pleased and then suspicious. 

‘Wait, are you saying that because I’m being an ass?’

John thought about this. ‘No.’ He said firmly, ‘I’m saying it because I really fucking love you.’

‘Oh. Oh well. Me too . . . you know, I feel the same. About you. The love thing.’ Rodney looked adorably shy. ‘Completely.’ He added for emphasis, and that made John give Rodney his best smile.

‘C’mon, McKay, if we don’t get up now, I’m gonna lose my willpower and keep you in this bed all morning.’ John reluctantly wriggled free of Rodney’s embrace with a few last kisses and this time reached for the right radio. 

Atlantis was waiting for them, apparently with a whole new puzzle.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for 'Don't Ask' by pebbles1971](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28047687) by [Salchat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salchat/pseuds/Salchat)




End file.
